



X 




lo 657 


J}Irs. Oliphant 


30 Cents 


tered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Mattv. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price per Year, 12 Nos., $5.00. 


LADY CAR 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE 


BY 

ME8. OLIPHANT 


AUTHOR OF 

i 

\ 

< 

i 



“CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORH ” ETC. 



NEW YOEK 

BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

September, 1889 


HARPER’S FRANKi.IN SQUARE LIBRARY. 

LATEST ISSUES. 


657. 

656. 

655. 

654. 

653. 

652. 

651. 

650. 

649. 

648. 

647. 

646. 

645. 

644. 

643. 

642. 

641. 

640. 

639. 

638. 

637. 

636. 

635. 

634. 

633. 

632. 

631. 

630. 

629. 

628. 

627. 

626. 

625. 

624. 

623. 

622. 

621. 

620. 

619. 

618. 

617. 

616. 


615. 

614. 

613. 

612. 

611. 

610. 


CENTS. 

Lady Car. A Novel. By Mrs. 01 iph ant .30 

O^eechee Cross-Firings. A Novel. By R. M. 

J^ohuston 35 

Margaret Maliphant. A Novel. By Mrs. Comyns 


Carr 


45 


The County. A Story of Social Life 45 

Through Love to Life. A Novel. By Gillan Vase 40 
Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill. A Novel. ByTasina 40 
Birch Dene. A Novel. By William Westall. 45 
The Day Will Come. A Novel. By Miss Braddon 45 
Cleopatra. A Novel. By H. Rider Haggard. 

Illu.strated 25 

Micah Clarke. A Novel. By A. Conan Doyle. 45 
Zit and Xoe. A Novel. By the Author of 

“ Lady Bluebeard.” 25 

The Nether World. A Novel. By George Gis- 

sing 45 

Fraternity. A Romance 35 

The Phantom Future. A Novel. By Henry S. 

Merriman 85 

The Country Cousin. A Novel. By Frances 

Mary Peard 40 

Lady Bluebeard. A Novel. By the Author of 

“Zit and Xoe.” 40 

A Dangerous Catspaw. A Novel. By D. Chi^- 

tie Murray and Henry Murray 30 

French Janet. A Novel. By Sarah Tytler 30 

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylin- 
der. Illustrated 50 

Toilers of Babylon. A Novel. B. L. Farjeon. . 40 
The Weaker Vessel. A Novel. By D. Christie 

Murray. Illustrated 50 

When a Man’s Single. A Tale of Literary Life. 

By J. M. Barrie 35 

The Peril of Richard Pardon. A Novel. By 

B. L. Farjeon. Illustrated i: 30 

For Faith and Freedom. A Novel. By Walter 

Besant. Illustrated 50 

The Countess Eve. A Novel. By J. H. Short- 

house 25 

A Christmas Rose. A Novel. ByR.E.Francillon. 30 

Yule-Tide Stories and Pictures 25 

The Inner House. A Novel. By Walter Besant 30 
In Far Lochaber. A Novel. By William Black 40 
The Mediation of Ralph Hardelot. A Novel. 

By William Minto 30 

The Rebel Rose. A Nt)vel 40 

The Eavesdropper. A Novel. By James Payn 25 

Through the Long Nights. A Novel. By Mrs. 

E. Lynn Linton 25 

The Fatal Three. A Novel. By M. E. Braddon 30 
The Mystery of Mirbridge. A Novel. By James 

Payn. Illustrated 50 

The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat. A 

Novel. By William Black. Illustrated 50 

Wessex Tales. By Thomas Hardy 35 

Joyce. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant 35 

The Life of W’illiam I., Emperor of Germany 

and Kpig of Prussia. Illustrated 10 

Herr Paulus. A Novel. By Walter Besant 35 

Only a Coral Girl. A Novel. By Gertrude Forde 30 
For the Right. A Novel. By Karl Emil Fran- 
zos. Translated by Julie Sutter. With a Pre- 
face by George Macdonald, LL.D 30 

Thrift. By Samuel Smiles. 20 

Miser Farebrother. A Novel. By B.L. Farjeon. 

Illustrated 25 

Katharine Regina. A Novel. By Walter Besant 15 

Character. By Samuel Smiles 20 

In Exchange for a Soul. A Novel. By Mary 

Linskill 20 

Mere Suzanne, and Other Stories. By Katha- 
rine S. Macquoid 20 


CEN'l 

Willis m 


609. Her Two Millions. A Novel. By 

Westall. Illustrated 

608. Friend MacDonald and the Laud of the Moun- 

seer. By Max O’Rell 

607. The Frozen Pirate. A Novel. By W. Clai k 

Russell. Illustrated 

606. One that Wins. A Novel. By the Author yf 

“ Whom Nature Leadeth ” ' . 

605. A Fair Crusader. A Story of To-day. By Will- 
iam Westall 

604. An Ugly Duckling. A Novel. By Henry Erroll 
603. Paddy at Home (“CAe^: Paddy’'). By Baron E. Ue- 
Mandat-Grancey. Translated by A. P. Morto)i. 
602. Madame’s Granddaughter. By Frances M. Peard 
601. Diane De Breteuille. A Love Story. By Hubert 

E. H. Jeruingham 

600. The Great World. A Novel. By Joseph Hat- 
ton 

599. A Book for the Hammock. By W. Clark Russell 
598. More True Than Truthful. A Novel. By Mrs. 

Charles M. Clarke 

597. Essays and Leaves from a Note -Book. By 

George Eliot 

596. Weeping Ferry. A Novel. By George Hal se.. . 
595. In Bad Hands, and Oilier Stories. By F. W. 

Robinson 

594. Prison Life in Siberia. By Fedor Dostoieffsky. 

Translated by H. Sutherland Edwards 

593. The O’Donnells of Inchfawn. A Novel. By 

L. T. Meade. With One Illustration 

592. The Holy Rose. A Novel. By Wbilter Besant. < 
591. Jacobi’s Wife. A Novel. By Adeline Sergeant 
69(). “V. R;” Or, The Adventures of Three Days in 
1837 (With Two Nights Between). By E. Rose. 
589. Present Position of European Politics. By Sir 

Charles W. Dilke 

588. 99 Dark Street. A Novel. By F. W. Robinson, 
587. A Choice of Chance. By William Dobson. . . . . ^ 

586. A Lost Reputation. A Novel 

585. Amor Vinci t. A Novel. By Mrs. Herbert Martin 

584. Disappeared. By Sarah Tytler 

583. To Call Her Mine. By Walter Besant. Ill’d.. 
582. Marrying and Giving in Marriage. A Novel. 

By Mrs. Molesworth 

581. Next of Kin — Wanted. By Miss M. B. Edwards 
580. In the Name of the Tzar. By J. Belford Dayne. 

579. Glow-worm Tales. By James Payn 

578. Garrison Gossip. By John Strange W^inter 

.577. Amaryllis at the Fair. By Richard Jefferies.. . 

576. Charles Reade. A Memoir 

575. Knight-Errant. A Novel. By Edna Lyall. . . .*| 

574. The Bride of the Nile. By Georg Ebers 

57.3. Srtbina Zembra. A Novel. By William Black 

572. The Woodlanders. By Thomas Hardy 

571. The Golden Hope. By W. Clark Russell 

570. Kidnapped.— Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 

Hyde.— Treasure Island. By R. L. Stevenson. 
569. The Merry Men, <fec. By Robert L. Stevenson. . 
568. Springhaven. A Novel. By J. D. Blnckmore. . 

567. Jess. A Novel. By H. Rider Haggard . . 

566. The Fawcetts and Garods. By Suimath 

565. Gladys Fane. By T. Wemyss 'Reid 

.564. Elizabeth’s Fortune. A Novel. By Bertha Thomas 
.563. A Near Relation. A Novel. By C. R. Coleridge 
.562. Devon Boys. By G. M. Fenn. Illustrated. , . . . . 
561. Dorothy Forster. A Novel. By Walter Besant. 
560. The Girl in the Brown Habit. By Mr.**. Kennard. 
,559. John Westacott. A Novel. By James Baker. . 
,5.58. She. By H. Rider Haggard. Profusely Ill’d. . . 
557. The World Went Very Well Then. A Novel. By 

Walter Besant. Profusely Illustrated > 

.5.56. A 'Wilful Young Woman. A Novel 

5.55. A Daughter of the People. By G. M. Craik 


It, 

20 

15 

20 

15 

1.5 

25 

2a 

26 
20 
20 
20 

20 

15 

25 

15 

20 

20 

2a 

25 
20 
20 
20 

26 

25 

20 

2i 


Fublislied HARFER & BROTHERS, TsTew York:. 

WT* Haupeb & Broth E us 2 oill send any of the above irorks by mail, postage prepaid ^ to any part of the United States, 

Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.. 


s 




/ 

By MRS. OLIPHANT. 


A COUNTRY Gentleman. 4to, Paper, 20 cts. 

A House Divided against Itself. 4to, 
Paper, 20 cents. 

Agnes. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

A Son of the Soil. 8vo, Paper, 60 cents; 
Cloth, $1 00. 

Brownlows. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

Carita. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
Effie Ogilvie. 12mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

FOR Love and Life. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
Harry Joscelyn. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
Hester. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

He that Will Not when He May. 4to, 
Paper, 20 cents. 

Innocent. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

It was a Lover and his Lass. 4to, Paper, 
20 cents. 

Joyce. 8vo, Paper, 35 cents. 

Lady Jane. 4to, Paper, 10 cents. 

Lady Car. 8vo, Paper, 30 cents. 

Lucy Crofton. 12mo, Paper, 25 cents; 
Cloth, $1 50. 

Madam. lOmo, Cloth, 75 cents ; 4to, Paper, 
25 cents. 

Madonna Mary. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
Miss Marjoribanks. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
Mrs. Arthur. 8vo, Paper, 40 cents. 

♦Lady Car is a Sequel 


Ombra. 8vo, Pajier, 50 cents. 

Phcebe, Junior. 8vo, Paper, 35 cents. 

Sir Tom. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. ’ 

Sketch of Sheridan. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. 

Squire Arden. 8vo, Paper, 60 cents. 

The Chronicles of Carlingford. 8vo, 
Paper, 60 cents. 

THE Curate in Charge. 8vo, Paper, 20 
cents. 

The Fugitives. 4to, Paper, 10 cents. 

The Greatest Heiress in England. 4 to. 
Paper, 15 cents. 

♦The Ladies Lindores. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00; 
4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

The Laird of Norlaw. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

The Last of the Mortimers. 12mo, 
Cloth, $1 50. 

The Perpetual Curate. 8vo, Paper, 50 cts. 

The Primrose Path. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

The Queen. Illustrated. 4to,- Paper, 25 
cents. 

The Son of his Father. 4to, Paper, 20 cts. 

The Wizard’s Son. 4to, Paper, 25 cents. 

Valentine and his Brother. 8vo, Paper, 
50 cents. 

Within the Precincts. 4to, Paper, 15 cts. 

Young Musgrave. 8vo, Paper, 40 cents, 
to The Ladies Lindores. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

XW" Any of the abme works will be sent by mailf postage prepaid^ to any part of the United States, 
Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


LADY CAR 


THE SEQUEL *0F A LIFE. 


CHAPTER I. 

Lady Caroline Beaufort was supposed to be, as life 
goes, an unusually fortunate woman. It is true that 
things had not always gone well with her. In her youth 
she had been married almost by force — as near it as any- 
thing ever is in an age when parental tyranny is of 
course an anachronism — to a man unlike herself in every 
way — an uncultured, almost uncivilized, rich booi: of the 
neighborhood, the descendant of a navvy who had be- 
come a millionaire, and who inherited all the character- 
istics of his race along with their money, although he 
had never known anything of navvydorn, but had been 
born a Scotch country gentleman with a great estate. 
It is to be supposed that her father and mother believed 
it to be for her real good when they placed poor Car, 
fainting with fright and horror, in the arms of a man 
whose manners made even them wince, though they 
were forced into no such constant contact with him, for 
they were far from being wicked parents or bad people 


4 


LADY CAE: 


in any way. There is nothing in the world so difficult 
to understand as the motives which lead fathers and 
mothers to such acts, not so common as they used to be, 
yet not so rare as they ought to be. They think, per- 
haps, that a little aversion at first tells for next to noth- 
ing in the long run, and that an affectionate, gentle 
creature, submissive to law and custom, will end by lov- 
ing any man who belongs to her, or having at least some 
sort of sentiment which will answer for love ; and that, 
on the other hand, no fantastic passion of youth is to be 
trusted to surmount all the risks of life in the lottery of 
marriage, which affords so many changed points of view ; 
whereas wealth is a solid and unchangeable good which 
outlives every sentiment. These, I suppose, were the 
conclusions of Lord and Lady Lindores when they mar- 
ried their daughter to Mr. Thomas Torrance — or, rather, 
these were the conclusions of the earl, in which his wife 
concurred very doubtfully, and with much reluctance, 
rather failing in courage to support her child in any 
effort for liberty than helping to coerce her. If Lord 
Lindores was determined as to the value of wealth. Lady 
Lindores was one of those women who have come to 
the silent conclusion that nothing is of any, great value, 
and that life has no prizes at all. What does it matter ? 
she was in the habit of saying to herself. She did not 
believe in happiness — a little less comfort or a little 
more was scarcely worth struggling for ; and no doubt, 
as Lord Lindores said, wealth was one of the few really 
solid and reliable things in the world, a thing with which 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


5 


many minor goods could be purchased — relief to the 
poor, which was always a subject of satisfaction, and 
other alleviations of life. Lady Car was sacrificed to 
these tenets. But Providence had been good to her; 
and while she was still young her husband had died. 
If he did not justify Lord Lindores’ expectations in his 
life he did in his death. For he left everything in his 
wife’s hands: not only had she the excellent jointure 
which her settlements secured her — a jointure without 
any mean and petty clause about marrying again— but 
everything was left in her hands — the control of the 
property during little Tom’s minority, and almost every 
advantage which a queen-mother could have. Tom was 
a little fellow of six, so that a long period of supremacy 
was in Carry’s hands, and the rough fellow whom she 
had almost hated, from whom her very soul had shrunk 
with a loathing indescribable, had done her the fullest 
justice. It is doubtful whether Lady Car was at all 
touched by these evidences of devotion on the part of a 
man who had bullied and oppressed her for years. 
But she was startled into violent and passionate com- 
punction, extraordinary in so gentle a person, by the 
still wilder and more impassioned joy which swept over 
her soul when she heard of his sudden death. Poor 
Lady Car had not been able to resist that fiood of exul- 
tation which took possession of her against her will. 
What did she want with his money ? He was dead and 
she was free. It filled her with a guilty, boundless de- 
light, and then with compunction beyond expression, as 


6 


LADY CAB: 


she tried to return from that wild joy and took herself 
to task. 

And then, after a very short interval, she had married 
again ; she had married what in the earlier years of the 
century people called the man of the heart — the lover of 
old days who had been dropped, who had been ignored 
when Lord Lindores came to his title and the prospects 
of the family had changed. How much Lady Caroline 
knew or did not know of the developments through 
which Mr. Beaufort had passed in the meantime no one 
ever discovered. She found him much as he had been 
when her family had dropped him, only not so young. 
A man who had made no way, a man without reproach, 
yet without success, who had kept stationary all the time, 
and was still a man of promise when his contemporaries 
had attained all that they were likely to attain. Beau- 
fort was poor, but Lady Car was now rich. There was 
not the least reason why they should not marry unless 
he had been fantastic and refused to do so on account 
of her superior wealth. But he had no such idiotic 
idea. So that Lady Car was considered by most people, 
especially those who had a turn for the sentimental, as 
a very lucky woman. There had been the Torrance 
episode when she had not been happy, and which had 
left her the mother of two children, destined, perhaps, 
some time or other, to give her trouble. But they were 
children amply provided for, and she had an excellent 
jointure, and had been able to marry at thirty the man of 
her heart. She was a very lucky woman, more fortu- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


7 


nate than most — far more fortunate than three parts of 
those women who make, compulsorily or otherwise, ill-as- 
sorted marriages to begin with. In very few cases indeed 
does the undesirable husband die, leaving his wife so much 
money as that, unburdened by any condition as to marry- 
ing again ; and very seldom indeed does the woman so hap- 
pily left pick up again in the nick of time her first love, 
and find him unchanged. It was quite a romantic story, 
and pleased people ; for, however worldly-minded we may 
be, we all like to hear of a fortunate chance like this, and 
that all is well that ends well, and that the hero and 
heroine live happy ever after, which was the conclusion 
in this case. 

The first part of Lady Oar’s history has been written 
before ; but probably the reader remembers nothing of 
it, and no one would blame him ; for it is an old story, 
and a great many episodes of that human history which 
we call fiction have been presented to his attention since 
then. She was tall, of a pliant, willowy figure, soft gray 
eyes, and an abundance of very soft light-brown hair. 
Her complexion was pale but clear, and her nose a trifie, 
the merest trifie, longer than the majority of noses. 
This conduced greatly (though I don’t deny that it was 
a defect) to the general impression made by Lady Caro- 
line, who was what is called aristocratic in appearance 
from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot. It 
was the grand distinction, an air such as some of the 
humblest-minded and most simple of women often have 
of that ethereal superiority of race which we all believe 


8 


LADY CAE: 


in. Asa matter of fact, her brother, Lord Rintoul, had 
a great deal less distinction in his appearance than many 
a poor clerk. But Lady Car might have been a princess 
in her own right, and so, to be sure, she was. Unfor- 
tunately, I am obliged to describe her to begin with, 
since it is impossible to bring her forward in her own 
person until I have told a little of her story. She was 
amazingly, passionately happy in her second marriage 
— at first. If she saw any drawbacks she closed her 
eyes to them, as passionately determined to admit noth- 
ing that went against her bliss — but perhaps she did not 
see anything. And, after all, there was not much to 
see. Mr. Beaufort was a gentleman. He was a man of 
great cultivation of mind, an excellent scholar, under- 
standing every literary allusion that could be made, 
never at a loss for a happy phrase or quotation, quite an 
exceptional man in the way of culture and accomplish- 
ment. He was extremely good-looking, his manners 
were admirable, his character without reproach. Noth- 
ing seemed wanting in him that a woman could desire. 
And, notwithstanding the uncomfortable episode of her 
first marriage, and the two black-browed children, who 
had not a feature of their mother’s, he was Lady Car’s 
only love, and, so far as anybody knows, or as was ever 
known, she was his. By how many devious ways a pair 
may be led who are destined to meet at last ! He in vari- 
ous wanderings over the world ; she, in the blank of her 
dreadful life, through all her martyrdoms, had all the time 
been tending to this. And now they were happy at last. 




4 ' 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


9 


“ No, Edward,” she said ; “ don’t let us settle down ; 
I can’t: a house would not contain me. I want the 
grand air, as the French say. I should be making hor- 
rible comparisons, I should be, thinking” — she stopped 
with a shiver — ‘‘ of the past. Let us go abroad. I have 
not been abroad since we were parted ; it will look like 
taking up the story where it dropped.” 

Beaufort gave a half-conscious glance towards the 
spot outside where the black-browed children were play- 
ing. He felt, perhaps, that it would not be so easy to 
take up the story where it had dropped ; but he assented, 
with quiet gentleness soothing her. am always fond 
of wandering. I have done little else all my life — and 
with you !” 

“ Yes, with you !” she repeated. She was accustomed 
to the children, and did not think of the anachronism of 
their presence at the moment of taking up the story. 
‘‘You shall take me to all the new places where you have 
been alone, and we’ll go to the old places where we were 
that summer together; we’ll go everywhere and see 
everything, and then when all the novelty is exhausted 
we shall come back and make a home of our own. And 
then, Edward, you shall be left free for your work. 
How we used to talk of it that summer ! You have not 
done much to it yet ?” 

“Nothing at all,” he said, with something like a 
blush. 

“ So much the better,” cried Lady Car. “ I should 
have been jealous had you done it without me — you 


% 


10 


LADY CAR: 


could not do it without me. You shall not touch a 
pen while we are away, but observe everything, and 
investigate mankind in all aspects, and then we’ll 
come home — and then, Edward, what care I shall take 
that you are not disturbed — how I shall watch and 
keep off every care! You shall have no trouble 
about anything, no noises or foolish interruption, no 
one to disturb you but me. And I will be no inter- 
ruption.” 

‘‘ Never, my love,” he said, fervently ; but this was 
the only thing to which he responded clearly. He had 
not, perhaps, the same intentions about that great work 
as once he had. He did not see it in the same light; 
but it gave him a certain pleasure to see her enthusiasm. 
It surprised him, indeed, that she could be capable of 
that enthusiasm just as if the story had never dropped. 
Women, sweet souls! are so strange. There had been 
nothing in his life so definite as the Torrance marriage 
and the black-browed children ; but yet she was capable 
of taking up the dropped story just where it had been 
thrown aside. So far as love went he felt himself capa- 
ble of that too, but then he had not dropped the love 
when the story was dropped. Whereas she — In all 
these records there was something to be got over with 
a faint uneasiness, to be ignored if possible. He could 
not return with the same unity of mind as she displayed 
to the half-forgotten things of the past. But he was 
sure that her presence would never be any interruption, 
and he was pleased to fall into her eager, delightful 


TEE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


11 


plans, and to think of wandering with her wherever two 
people can wander, and when the two people are man 
and wife that is virtually everywhere. He was very 
ready for that dream of life. 

Besides, if there is anything out of the way in the 
conditions of a new beginning, it is always a good thing 
to go abroad. Little anomalies which stand out from 
the surface of quiet life at home look so much less in 
the atmosphere of strange places and among the varieties 
of travel. The best way to forget that there has been 
once a great gap between two who are to be one, and a 
lifetime passed by each in surroundings so different, is 
to go far away and make new joint associations for each 
which will bridge over that severance. Neither of them 
gave this reason : she, perhaps, because she was uncon- 
scious of it ; he, because he had no desire to state the case 
either to the world or to her — or even to himself. He 
was, in his way, with the many precautions which he 
had taken to keep disagreeable subjects at a distance, a 
genuine philosopher in the old-fashioned sense of the 
word. 

Accordingly they went abroad, for something more 
than the longest honeymoon, the black-browed children 
accompanying them more or less, that is, they performed 
certain journeys in the wake of the pair, and were settled 
here and there, at suitable centres, with all the attend- 
ance of skilled nurses and governesses which wealth 
makes it so easy to procure, while Lady Car and her 
husband pursued their further way, never altogether 


12 


LADY CAE: 


out of reach. She never forgot she was a mother even 
in the first rapture of her new happiness. And he was 
very good to the children. At their early age most 
children are amusing, and Mr. Beaufort was eminently 
gentle and kind. His wife’s eyes shone when she saw 
him enter into their little lives as if they had been his 
own. What a thing for them to have such a man from 
*whom to derive their first ideas of what a man should 
be ! What a thing ! She stopped and shuddered when 
she realized her own meaning ; and yet how true it was 
— that the instructor they might have had, the example, 
the warning, the inan who was their father, had been 
taken away, to leave the room open for so much better 
a teacher, for a perfect example, for one who would be a 
real father to them ! Poor children ! Lady Car felt 
for them something of the conventional pity for the 
fatherless even in the midst of the swelling of her heart 
over this great gift that had come to them. Their father 
indeed ! 

The years of the honeymoon flew like so many days of 
happiness. They went almost everywhere where a sea 
voyage was not indispensable, for Lady Car was a very 
bad sailor. They avoided everything that could have 
been troublesome or embarrassing in their conversations, 
and were quite old married people, thoroughly used to 
each other, and to all their mutual diversities of feel- 
ing and ways of thinking, before they returned home. 
They were both vaguely aware that the honie-coming 
would be a trying moment, but not enough so to be 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 13 

afraid of it or resist the conviction that the time had 
come when it was no longer possible to put it off. It 
was before they returned home, however, in the first 
consultations over their future dwelling, that the first 
real divergence of opinion arose. 


14 


LADY CAB: 


CHAPTER 11. 

must think of where we are going to live/’ 
Lady Car said ; we have never discussed that question. 
The world is all before us where to choose — ” 

The boat lay faintly rocking upon the little wavelets 
from which the ruddy reflection of the sunset was just 
fading. The beautiful outline of the mountains on the 
Savoy side stood out blue and half-cold against the 
glowing west, the Dent du Midi had still a flush of rose 
color upon its pinnacles, but had grown white and cold 
too in the breadth of its great bosom. Evening was 
coming on, and, though there was still little chill in the 
air, the sentiment of the September landscape was cold. 
That suspicion of coming winter which tells the birds 
so distinctly that it is time to be gone breathed a hint 
to-night into human faculties more obtuse. Carry 
threw her shawl round her with a little shiver which was 
quite fantastic and unnecessary. She did not really 
mean that it began to be cold, but only that something 
had made her think of a fireside. 

He was seated in front of her with his oars resting 
idly in the rowlocks. It was a lovely night, and they 
were close to their temporary home, within a few min- 
utes of the shore. Where we are going to live he 



THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 15 

said. “Then you don’t think of going to your own 
house.” 

She started a little. He would never have found it 
out had they been on solid ground, but the boat respond- 
ed to every movement. It was only from this that he 
knew he had startled her, for she recovered herself im- 
mediately, and said, “Would you like that, Edward ?” 
in a voice which she evidently meant to be as easy as 
usual, but from which consciousness was not altogether 
banished. 

“ Well,” he said, “ my love, it will be the time of year 
for Scotland, and I suppose there is plenty of game ; 
but I neither like nor dislike. Car. I have not thought 
about it. I suppose I had taken it for granted that 
your own house would be the place to which you would 
go.” 

“ I never thought of it as my own home,” she said, 
in a low, hurried tone, which he could scarcely hear. 
“ Oh, no, no. I could not go there.” 

“ Well,” he said, cheerfully, “ then of course we sha’n’t 
go there. I don’t care where we go ; wherever you are 
there is my home. I had not known one till I had 
you : it is for you to choose.” 

She said nothing more for a time, but leaned a little 
over the side of the boat, putting down her hand into 
the darkening ripples. “ After all, the lake is as warm 
as if it were summer still,” she said. It was she who 
had introduced the subject, but something had blown 
across her, a breath from the past, which had taken all 


16 


LADY OAR: 


the pleasure out of it. She shivered a little again, with 
a contradictoriness of which she was unaware. “ There 
must have been snow somewhere, I think, up among the 
hills.” 

“ It is you who are blowing hot and cold. Carry,” he 
said, smiling at her. “ I think myself it is a perfect 
evening. Look at the last steamer, passing along 
against the line of the hills, with its lights, and crammed 
with tourists from stem to stern. Shall we go in? 
There’s time enough before it gets here, but I know 
you don’t like the wash.” 

I don’t like anything that agitates the water, or any- 
thing else, perhaps.” 

“ Not so bad as that ; it is I who am most tolerant of 
the dead level. You like a little agitation, or commo- 
tion, or what shall I call it?” 

Do you think so, Edward ? No, I love calm ; I am 
most fond of peace, the quiet lake, and the still country, 
and everything that goes softly.” 

“ My love,” he said, you like what is best always, and 
the best has always movement in it. You never liked 
monotony. Let things go softly, yes, but let them go ; 
whereas I can do very well without movement. I like 
to lie here and let the water sway us where it pleases ; 
you want me to take the oars and move as we will.” 

“ Yes,” she said, with a soft laugh, “ perhaps I do. 
You see through me, but not altogether,” she added, 
with another hasty movement, betrayed once more by 
the boat. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


17 


“No, not altogether,” be said-, with a look which, in 
the gathering dimness of the twilight, she did not 
perceive. Besides, his head was turned away, and his 
mind also. She hoped, indeed, he did not, he would 
never divine the almost horror that had sprung up in 
her at the idea which he had taken so calmly, that of 
going back to what he called her own house. Her own 
house ! it had never been hers. She thought then that 
she would never go back to a place full of the old life 
that was past, thank God ! yet never could be quite past 
so long as her recollection so ached at the thought of it. 
It seemed to Lady Car that if she went back she might 
find that he was still there, and that everything that had 
been since was but a dream. 

The night falls faster in these regions than in the lin- 
gering North. It was almost dark already, though so 
short a time since the sun set. The steamer came rust- 
ling along, more audible than visible, a bustling shadow 
against the opal gleam of the water and the cold blue of 
the hills, with its little bright lights like jewels, and 
swift progress, throbbing along through the heart of the 
twilight. Lights began to appear in the windows of 
the tall houses along the bank. The night was gradu- 
ally stealing into the vacant place of the day. The 
steamer came on with a rush of purpose and certain 
destruction, and roused her from her thoughts to a little 
nervous tremor. “ I wish you would take the oars, Ed- 
ward, as you say, and let us go in, please. I know it 
will do us no harm ; but — ” 

2 


18 


LADY GAR: 


“You are frightened all the same,” he said, leisurely 
settling to the oars. 

“ It is like a spirit of evil,” she cried. 

He took the boat in, making haste to free her from 
that little nervous thrill of apprehension, though with a 
laugh. She was aware that she was fantastic in some 
things, and that he was aware of it. It was a little im- 
perfection that did no harm. A woman is the better 
for having these little follies. He felt a fond superior- 
ity as he rowed her in with a few strokes, amused at 
her sense of danger. And it was not till some time later, 
after they had climbed a somewhat rugged path to their 
villa among the trees, and had looked into the room 
where little Janet lay fast asleep, and then had supped 
cheerfully at a table close to the broad window, that the 
subject was resumed. By this time all the noises were 
stifled, a full moon was rising slowly, preparing to 
march along the sky in full majesty in the midst of the 
silent tranquillity of the night ; there was not a breath 
of air stirring, not a cloud upon the blue heavens, which 
were already almost as clear as day by the mere resplen- 
dence of her coming over the solid mountains, with their 
many peaks, which “ stepped along the deep.” The 
steamer had rustled away to its resting-place, wherever 
that was. The tourists had found shelter in the hotels, 
which shone with their many lights along the edge of the 
lake. These big caravansaries were unseen from the villa, 
all that was noisy and common was out of sight ; the lake 
all still, not a boat out, with a silver line of ripples mak- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


19 



ing a straight but broken line across the large glimmer 
of its surface ; the dark hills opposite, with a silver 
touch here and there, and the great open-eyed, abundant 
moon above looking down upon them, they and she the 
only things living in that wonderful space which was all 
beauty and calm. They sat looking out for some time 
without saying anything. Such a night is in itself a 
sort of ecstasy, especially to those who want nothing, 
and with whom, as with the whole apparent world 
stretched out before them, all is well. 

And to think we shall have to leave all this present- 
ly and enter into the fret and care of settling down !” he 
said, with a half-laugh. “ I interrupted you, dear, to- 
night when you were talking of that. I suppose it was 
I that diverted your thoughts. Since it is not to be 
your Towers, where is it to be 

‘‘ Not my Towers,” she said, with a little half-reproach- 
ful look at him and a sudden clasping together of her 
lightly interlaced fingers. 

“Well, let us say Tom’s Towers; but in present cir- 
cumstances it is very much the same.” 

Once more a little shiver ran over her, though there 
was no chill at all in the soft air that came in from the 
lake and the moonlight. But her voice was a little un- 
certain with it, as if her teeth had chattered. “ Don’t 
talk of it,” she said ; “ I want no Towers. I want not 
2^ place at all, or any quarters, but a house, a pretty house, 
just big enough for us and them, somewhere, wherever 
you would like, Edward.” 


20 


LADY CAB: 


I shall like what you like,” he said. 

But that is not what I wish at all ; I want you to 
tell me what will please you. You would like to be 
within reach of the great libraries, within reach of what 
is going on. No one can write what is to live without 
being within reach — ” 

He shook his head. ‘^Tou are too partial in your 
estimate of what I am likely to do ; so long as I am 
within reach of you — and, thank God ! nothing can put 
me out of that — I don’t know that I care for anything 
more.” 

That is what I should say, Edward,” she said, with 
some vehemence, ’^^not you. Do you think I am such 
a silly woman as to wish you to be entirely occupied 
with me? No, no; that is the woman’s part.” 

Well,” he said, with his usual soft laugh, “mine is 
the feminine role, you know, to a great extent. Fortu- 
nately, my disposition quite chimes in with it.” , 

“ What do you mean by the feminine role ' 

“ My love, I don’t mean anything. I mean that life 
was too many for me when you and I were parted. I 
was the divided half, don’t you know, ^ of such a friend- 
ship as had mastered time.’ Being sundered from my 
mate, time mastered me : I took to floating, as you don’t 
like to do, even on the lake.” 

“Edward,” she cried, “if anything could make it 
more dreadful to me to think of that time, it would be 
hearing you speak so.” 

“ Don’t,” he said, “ there is no occasion ; after all. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


21 


neither time nor anything else masters one if it is not in 
one’s nature. You think too well of me. Carry. Some 
people are made to float.” 

‘‘ And what was I, then ?” she said. I was swept 
away. I could not resist the force against me. It was 
worse for me, oh ! far worse, Edward, than for you. I 
was caught by the torrent : there was no floating in my 
case. Perhaps you will say I was made to be carried 
away.” 

“My darling,” he said, “that’s all over and past. 
Don’t let us think of what is done with. Here we are 
now, two people, not very old, quite able to enjoy all the 
good things of this life, and who have got them, thank 
Heaven! in a large share. What would you and I 
have attained with all the flghting possible, compared 
to the happiness of being together, having each other’s 
constant company ? And we have got that, with many 
pretty things besides,” he added, with his gentle laugh. 

Lady Car felt the words like a flood pouring to her 
lips, but she was silent ; how could she speak ? Did it 
never occur to him how these pretty things were attained 
— how it was that he and she sat out here by this win- 
dow looking out upon Lake Leman and the moonlight in 
circumstances such as only rich people can secure, both 
of them to start with being so poor — how it was that they 
had been able to wander about together, a pair of lovers, 
for years, with all the accessories of happiness as well as 
the happiness itself ? She clasped her slight fingers to- 
gether till the pressure hurt; but she said nothing. 


22 


LADY CAB: 


having nothing — having far too much to say. Such 
thoughts had glanced across her brain before, faintly, 
for a moment. She could not have told why they had 
become so much more vivid now. It was, no doubt, 
because of the change which was about to take place in 
their life, the giving up of the wandering, the settling 
down. Her thoughts carried her away altogether as 
she sat gazing out with vacant eyes at the lake and the 
moonlight, forgetting where she was and that she had an 
answer to make to the question addressed to her. At 
last her husband’s gentle voice, so refined and soft, 
startled her back to the reality of the moment. 

You don’t say anything. Carry. If I were of a 
jealous temper I might ask whether, perhaps, you were 
beginning to doubt ? but I don’t, I don’t, my love ; you 
need not defend yourself. We both know that is the 
best that life could give us, and it has come to us almost 
without an effort. Isn’t it so? For my part, IVe got 
all I want, and the rest of the circumstances are indif- 
ferent to me — where we live or what we do — you in my 
house and my home — and my occupation — and my con- 
tent. I want no more.” 

Could anything more sweet be said to a woman? 
According to all the conventionalities, no ; according to 
many of the most natural feelings, no. What could be 
better than each other’s constant society, to be together 
always, to share everything, to own no thought that was 
not within the charmed circle of their happiness ? As 
he said these words slowly, with little pauses between, 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


she took in all the sweetness of them, with a commen- 
tary in her mind that was not sweet, an impatience 
which scarcely could be controlled, a blank sensation as 
of impossibility which held back the impatience. Was 
there not something more to be said — something more ? 

Mr. Beaufort had lit his cigarette, which was so habit- 
ual to him, so completely the breath of his reflective 
leisure and gentleness and calm, that the most sensitive 
of women could not have objected to it; nothing so 
aggressive as a cigar ever touched his lips; as little as 
any lady could he tolerate a pipe. The little curl of 
blue smoke, the pungent but aromatic odor, the very 
attitude of the shapely hand holding it, were character- 
istic. The smoke curled softly upwards from his soft 
brown beard and moustache. He was a very handsome 
man, handsomer in his way than Carry, whose nose was 
a trifle too long and her mobile lips a trifle too thin. 
She was, indeed, a little too thin altogether, whereas he 
was perfect in the fulness of his manhood, just over 
forty, but as young and strong as, and enjoying his 
youth and strength more than, at twenty- flve. She 
looked at him and was silent. Is not a man better than 
a woman at that age above all ? Is not he more likely 
to have discovered the real secret of life? Was not he 
better able to judge than Carry, a creature who had 
never been wise, who had been hurried, passive, through 
so many horrors, and dragged out of a tragedy of awful 
life, to be landed at last on this pleasant shore ? Surely, 
seeing it must be so, her troubled mind made a wild 


24 


LADY GAR: 


circle from the point where they had parted until this, 
when they were one, and for a moment, in the dimness 
behind his chair, it seemed to Lady Car that she saw a 
spectre rise. She almost thought a shadowy face looked 
at her over Beaufort’s head — a face black-browed, with 
big, light, fiery eyes, burning as she had often seen them 
burn — the same eyes that were closed in sleep in little 
Janet’s crib — the same that sometimes gloomed out 
from her little boy’s dark countenance. Her faithful 
recollection made his picture on the air while Beaufort 
took dainty puffs of his cigarette. He had no such 
ghost to daunt him, his memory was pure and calm, 
while hers was filled with that dreadful shadow, and with 
reason, for without that shadow this happiness could 
never have been. What a thought for a woman — what 
a thought ! and to think that it should never once cross 
the imagination of the man who was enjoying all the 
other had lost — all and so much more — and that but for 
the other this happiness could never have been ! 

These thoughts came like a wave over Carry while 
she sat with her fingers clasped tight, arrested, dumb, in- 
capable of any reply. What a blessed thing that even 
one’s nearest and dearest cannot divine the quick 
thoughts that come and go, the visions that fiash across 
us, while we sit by their side and reveal nothing ! If 
Beaufort could have seen that black-browed spectre, and 
realized all that Torrance had brought for him, would 
he have maintained that attitude of thoughtful leisure, 
that calm of assured satisfaction and happiness? To 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


25 


be sure, he did know ; there was no secret in it ; every- 
body knew. There was nothing wrong, no guilt, nothing 
to blush for. The shame was all fanciful, as was that 
sense of her husband’s strange obtuseness and want of 
perception which had seized upon Carry, as if they had 
been horrible things, when they were quite innocent, 
natural things, which she ought to have most desired 
for him. It was curious, too, to think that between two 
people who loved each other so, who were so entirely in 
sympathy, one could be so unimpressed with the feelings 
of the other; that the air should be so full for her of 
ghosts, of passion and misery past, of the strange, horri- 
ble thought that it was by those passions and miseries 
that she had purchased, both for him and herself, this 
calm, and yet that he should divine nothing, but think 
it only a light question of locality, of where to settle 
down, of a desirable neighborhood ! Apparently the 
lightness of the decision they had to make, its entirely 
unimportant character, struck him as he lay back in his 
chair with his face towards the lake and the moonlight, 
and the faint blue curl of fragrant smoke rising in the air. 
‘‘ I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said, suddenly, with 
a laugh, “to facilitate this tremendous decision. We’ll 
take a succession of houses in different places, and find 
out by experiment which we like best.” 

She brought herself back to the triviality of the dis- 
cussion with a gasp, as if she had fallen, and with a 
great effort to dismiss those other thoughts. “ But that 
would be no better than travelling,” she said, “ of which 


26 


LADY CAE: 


I am a little tired. I want a home of my own, a house 
wliich belongs to no one else,” she added, with a slight 
shiver, “but you and me, Edward — no ghosts of other 
people in it.” 

“ Do you call their little pictures ghosts ?” he said, 
looking round at the dim walls, which were hung with 
portraits of the Swiss family to whom the villa belonged ; 
“not lovely ones, certainly, but quite innocent. Then, 
Carry, my love, do just as you please. I shall come with 
you, like Tom and Janet, to see the new place. If you 
choose one that’s very ugly and out of the way, we will 
all protest. But, so far as I am concerned, it can’t be 
ugly while you are there,” he said, putting his hands 
upon hers with a tender pressure. Then he added, with 
a look of solicitude, putting away the cigarette, “ Why, 
you are in a fever. Carry. Your poor little hands are 
like fire. I hope you haven’t taken cold on the lake.” 

“ I never take cold,” she said, smiling. “ I suppose 
it is mere silliness, thinking that this time is over and 
that we are going back to the world.” 

“ If that vexes you, my darling, don’t let us go back 
to the world.” 

“ Edward, you make me wild, you are so indifferent ! 
You speak as if nothing mattered, as if we could go on 
and just please ourselves and think of nothing else for- 
ever.” 

“ Well, my love, I tell you nothing matters to me ex- 
cept yourself, and I don’t think the world would mind 
much. But don’t be vexed. Carry. I know the boy 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


27 


must go to school, and all the rest of it. We’ll do our 
duty like men — I mean like women, which is far more 
thorough. And, for my part, I’m not a bit afraid of the 
world. Even London I can face quite tranquilly with 
you by my side, especially as at this time of the year 
there’s nobody there.” 

“ Oh, Edward !” she said, with a tender exasperation ; 
it is very soothing to be everything in the world to the 
man you love ; and yet — ” 


I 


28 


LADY GAB: 


CHAPTER III. 

They all came home, as people say — though it was no 
home to which they were coming, and they had been 
very much at home in their Swiss villa, notwithstanding 
the portraits of the Swiss owners of the place on all the 
walls. It is very delightful after a long absence to 
come home when that familiar place is open and wait- 
ing for you, and the children run about the rooms in a 
tumult of joy, recognizing everything, and you settle 
into your old chair, in your old corner, as if you had 
never been away. It is quite a different thing when a 
family comes home to settle down. Looking for a 
house is apt to be a weary operation, and a small house 
in London in autumn, in the meantime, is not very gay. 
But, on the other hand, in October London is not the 
dismal place it often appears to the stranger : there are 
still days of bright and sunny weather ; the brown grass 
in the parks has begun to recover itself a little ; the trees 
grow red and yellow and lend a little light of their own 
to supplement the skies. Though St. James Park is 
rarely more than in monotone, like a drawing in sepia, 
the wider breadths between the Marble Arch and Hyde 
Park Corner are brighter, and there is a little stir in the 
air of people coming back. It was rather a depressed 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


29 


and downcast family party that arrived after a brief but 
rough crossing of the Channel and all the wear and tear 
of the journey — Lady Car very pale, with lines on her 
forehead that showed all the freshly awakened anxiety 
with which the sight of her native country, involving, 
as it did, the renewing of many responsibilities and of 
life in its commonplace aspect after a long holiday, had 
filled her ; little Janet, very fretful and tired, almost pal- 
er than her mother, with her black brow and black hair 
and big blue lips accentuating the whiteness of her face ; 
Tom, distracted with the confinement and the impossi- 
bility of any play or commotion beyond that which 
could be carried on within the limited space of a rail- 
way carriage, exasperated and exasperating ; and an at- 
tendant group of tired maids, rendered half-frantic by 
his pranks and the impossibility of keeping him in order. 
Mr. Beaufort had an immense superiority amid this 
group. He had not turned a hair; the rough crossing 
had no effect upon him. He was very kind to little 
Janet, who had succumbed and was quietly miserable 
lying on a bench, and he took the tenderest care of his 
wife, who never at the worst moment lost her air of dis- 
tinction or was humbled to a common level even by the 
waves of the Channel. His tall figure, in a long ulster, 
with his fine brown beard blowing a little in the wind, 
his cigarette always giving forth a curl of dainty smoke, 
was a comfort to see, even at a distance, facing the 
breeze at the other end of the ship. Tom, who would 
not be kept down, clung to his stepfather, whom on other 


80 


LADY CAB: 


occasions he showed no great love for, trotting after 
him, standing in his shelter, with little legs set well apart, 
and now and then a clutch at the ulster to steady him- 
self, characteristically selecting the most sturdy member 
of the party to hold by. When the party tumbled into 
the hotel in the winterly evening, half dazed with fa- 
tigue, Beaufort was still the master of the situation. 
He was quite fresh and self-possessed. Coming back 
to England, which oppressed Lady Car with so many 
thoughts, did not affect him any more than crossing to 
Paris, or to Vienna, or to any other capital. The fact 
of beginning a new chapter of existence did not affect 
him. He felt it, indeed, to be no new chapter of exist- 
ence, only a continuance of the former. He was pleased 
enough to arrive, not sorry to end the wandering, glad 
enough to settle down. It meant rather rest to him 
than any excitement of a new beginning. He was half 
amused at and altogether indulgent and tolerant of 
Carry’s fancy about not going to her own house. It 
was, perhaps, a little absurd, for Scotland, of course, 
was the right place to go to at this time of the year ; 
and to look for a new house in a new place, when a 
house that belongs to you, in the most eligible position, 
is standing vacant, was, no doubt, a strange caprice. 
But if that was how she felt, far should it be from him 
to cross her. He was not a great sportsman. A day 
or two’s shooting, even a week or two, perhaps, could 
not harm any man, but he did not very much care if he 
never touched a gun. Still, it was so obvious that it 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


31 


was the Datural place to go to. He smiled to himself 
as he walked to the club after dinner, taking himself 
off that she might get to bed, to the rest she wanted so 
much, at this caprice of hers. Dear Carry, if it had 
been a much greater matter, so far as he was concerned 
she should have her way ; but he allowed to himself, 
with a smile, that it was a little silly. When you have 
been married for a time you are able to allow this with- 
out any derogation to your divinity. He admired and 
loved her as much as a man could do, but it was a pleas- 
ure to feel that a little indulgence had to be exercised, 
to mingle now and then with his chivalrous reverence 
and love. He would do nothing to cross her. She 
should get her house where she pleased, furnish it — 
with some aid from his own taste — how she pleased, 
and be happy as she would. He smiled as he walked 
along the familiar streets ; it was a pleasure to be in 
London again. It was a pleasure to be so w^ell off, he 
who had often been poorly enough off, doubtful sometimes 
whether he could afford to order his dinner at the club. 
All that was over now, and he had no objection to owe it 
to his wife. What did it matter which of them had the 
money ? Had he possessed it, how gladly would he have 
spent it upon Carry, to give her everything that heart 
could desire ! This is, when one comes to think of it, the 
real generosity, the most noble way of taking such a 
matter. To think that it was not Carry’s money, but the 
money of Torrance, that made everything so comfortable 
for them, happily did not dwell in his mind as it did in 


32 


LADY CAB: 


hers. He did not even think of it — it was so, of course, 
and of course she had purchased this competence which 
she shared with her second husband by being an excellent 
wife to the previous husband and winning his trust 
and confidence. Mr. Beaufort, luckily, did not feel that 
there was any reason for dwelling upon that side of the 
question. 

Next morning the whole party was revived and cheer- 
ful. The children, when they burst into the room, after 
a long-enforced waiting in the temporary nursery which 
looked to the back, and from which they saw nothing 
but chimneys and the backs of other houses, rushed to 
the large window of the room in which Lady Car was 
breakfasting, with a scream of pleasure. To look out upon 
the busy road, full of carriages and people, and the trees 
and space of Hyde Park beyond, delighted them. Lit- 
tle Tom stood smacking the whip which was his perpet- 
ual accompaniment and making ejaculations. “ Oh, I 
say ! What lots and lots of people ! There’s a pony ! 
but he can’t ride a bit, that fellow on it. Where’s he 
going to ride ? What’s inside those gates ? is it a pal- 
ace, or is it a park, or what is it ? I say, Beau ! — what a 
liar he is, Jan ! he said there was nobody in London — 
and there’s millions !” 

‘‘ Tom,” said Lady Car ; if you say such things you 
will be sent away.” 

Let him talk,” said Beaufort ; “ he is quite right 
from his point of view. You must remember, Tom, 
that, though you’re a clever fellov^ you don’t know 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


33 


everything; and there may be millions of people in 
London though there’s nobody.” 

They both turned upon him incredulous faces, with 
that cynicism of childhood which is as remarkable as its 
trust, overawed by a sense of his superior knowledge, 
yet quite unconvinced of his good faith. Their faces 
were very like each other — rather large and without color, 
their eyebrows shaggy and projecting, their large, round 
eyes d fleur de tete, Janet’s little red mouth, which was 
her pretty feature, was open with suspicion and wonder. 
Tom’s bore an expression of half-assumed scorn. He was 
a little afraid of Beau,” and had an alarmed belief in 
him, at the bottom of much doubt of his meaning and 
resistance generally. 

You seem to have a great budget of correspondence 
this morning. Car.” 

“ From the house-agents ; there seem to be houses to 
be had everywhere. Instead of any difficulty in finding 
one, we shall only be troubled where to choose. What 
do you say to Richmond ? the river is so lovely, and the 
park so delightful for the children, and — ” 

“ If Tom is going to school, as I suppose he is, there 
will only be one child to consider, and little Jan is not 
difficileP 

Am I going to school, mother?” Tom faced round 
again suddenly from the window and stood against the 
light with his legs -apart, a very square, solid little form 
to reckon with. 

“You must, my (fear boy; your education has been 

3 


34 


LADY CAB: 


kept back so long. To be sure, he knows French,” 
said Carry, with a wistful look at her husband, seeking 
approval, which so few boys of his age do.” Mr. 
Beaufort had considered that it would be advantageous 
for Tom to be at school before now. 

“I don’t mind,” said the boy. like it. I want 
to go. I hated all those French fellows — but they’re 
different here.” 

‘‘ The first thing they will ask you at Eton is whether 
you will take a licking,” said Beaufort ; that was how 
it was in my day.” 

I won’t,” cried Tom ; not if it was the biggest 
fellow in the school. Did you. Beau ?” 

I can’t remember, it’s so long ago,” said the step- 
father. “No, not Kichmond, if you please. Oar; it’s 
pretty but it’s Cockney. Sunday excursions spoil all the 
places about London.” 

“Windsor? One would still have the river within 
reach, and rides in the forest without end.” 

“ Windsor still less. Carry, my love. It’s a show place. 
Eoyal persons always coming and going, and crowds to 
stare at them. If you love me, no.” 

“That’s a large argument, Edward. We should not 
live in the town, of course, and to see the queen driving 
about would always be a little excitement.” 

“ Does she drive in a big umbrella like the gentlemen 
upon the omnibus ?” said Janet, whose eyes had been 
caught by that wonder. Tom had seen it too, and was 
full of curiosity, but kept his eye upon Beaufort to see 
whether he would laugh at the question. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


35 


Much grander, with gold fringe and a little royal 
standard flying from the top,” said Beaufort, gravely. 

You know the doge of Venice always had an umbrella, 
and other great princes.” 

Tom stared very steadily, with his big, round eyes, 
to watch for the suspicion of a smile, but, seeing none, 
ventured, with a little suppressed doubt and defiance of 
the possibly “ humbugging” answer, “Who are the men 
on the omnibuses ? They can’t all be princes ; they’re 
just like GOchersP 

“ Don’t you trust to appearances, my boy. Did you 
never hear that the greatest swells drove mail coaches ? 
Not Windsor, Car, not Windsor.” 

“ Surrey, Edward ? Guildford, Haslemere, Dorking — 
somewhere in that direction ?” 

“At Dorking, we should be in the way of the battle, 
Tom.” 

“ I should like that,” cried the boy ; “ and I suppose 
you can fire a gun. Beau ?” he added, after a moment’s 
hesitation, scrutinizing his stepfather closely, glad to 
have the chance of one insult, but something afraid of 
the response. 

“ Tom !” cried his mother, in a warning tone. 

“More or less,” said Beaufort, languidly; “enough 
to hit a Dutchman if there were one before me — you 
know they’re very broad. At Guildford people are 
buried on the top of a hill for the sake of the view. 
Yes, I think Surrey would do.” 

. “ Am I to go to Eton straight off, mother — is that in 


36 


LADY CAE: 


Surrey? I want to go a good long way off. I don’t 
want to be near home. You would be coming to see 
me, and Jan, and kiss me, and call me ‘ Tom,’ and make 
the other fellows laugh.” 

What should you be called but Tom ?” said Lady 
Car, with a smile. 

Torrance !” cried the child, with pride, as who should 
say Plantagenet. She had been looking at him, smiling, 
but at this utterance of the boy Lady Car started and 
turned burning red, then coldly pale. Why should she ? 
Nothing could be more fantastic, more absurd, than the 
feeling. She had done no harm in making a second 
marriage, in which she had found happiness, after the 
first one, which had brought nothing but misery. She 
had offended against no law, written or unwritten. She 
had wiped out Torrance and his memory and all belong- 
ing to him (except his money) for years. Why should 
the name which she had once borne, which was unde- 
niably her son’s name, affect her so deeply now ? The 
smile became fixed about the corners of her mouth, but 
the boy, of course, understood nothing of what was pass- 
ing in his mother’s mind, though he stared at her a lit- 
tle as if he did, increasing her confusion. The fellows 
never call a fellow by his christened name,” said Tom, 
great in the superiority of what he had learned from 
various school-boys on their travels. These were things, 
he was aware, which, of course, women didn’t know. 

“You’d better come and have a stroll with me. Mas- 
ter Tom,” said Beaufort. “ I’ll show you Piccadilly, 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


37 


which is always something; as for the Park, you 
wouldn’t care for it — there are no riders in the How 
now. You see, as I told you, there’s nobody in London. 
Come, get your hat, quickly.” 

Me too,” said little Janet, with a pout of her small 
mouth. 

‘‘ Not any ladies to-day, only two fellows, as Tom says, 
taking a stroll together.” 

In a moment. Beau,” cried Tom, delighted, rushing 
to get his hat. “I told you, Jan, old Beau’s a gentle- 
man — sometimes,” the boy added, as his sister ran after 
him to see what arrangements of her own she could 
make to the same end. 

“You are very good to them, Edward — oh! very 
good. How can I ever thank you?” said Lady Car, 
with tears in her eyes. Her nerves had been a little 
shaken by that shock, and by the vain perception that 
stole over her of two parties in the family, two that 
would become more distinctly two by the progress of 
years, unlike in nature and constitution and even in 
name. It is not necessary to insist upon the family 
name of children travelling with their mother. No 
one had been much the wiser during these years of 
wandering. But Tom’s “ Torrance !” was a revelation, 
and opened before her possibilities unknown. 

“Good, am I? That’s all right; that’s something to 
the credit side, but I was not aware of it,” said Beaufort, 
in his easy way ; “ all the same,” he added, laughing, 
“ Master Tom will want looking after, if we are to make 


38 


LADY CAE: 


anything of him. He will want a tight hand, which, I 
fear, does not belong either to you or me.” 

It cost Lady Car a pang to hear even this mild ex- 
pression of opinion about her boy. A mother says 
many things, and feels many things, about her children 
which no one else may say before her. She looked at 
him wistfully, with a faint smile, which was full of pain. 
‘‘He is only a child,” she said, apologetically, “and then 
he will get that at school.” She could not contradict 
him, and she could not argue with him. Poor little 
Tom ! he was her own, though he might not be all she 
wished him to be — the plea rose to her lips unconscious- 
ly that he was fatherless, that he had drawbacks to con- 
tend against, poor child ! What a plea to form, even un- 
consciously in her mind ! She looked at her husband 
with such a troubled and wistful appeal that his heart 
smote him. He laid his hand upon her head, caressing- 
ly, and stooped to kiss her. 

“ To be sure,” he said, “ the boy will be all right. 
Car. He has plenty of spirit, and that is the best thing, 
after all. Eeady, Tom? Come along, then. Pm ready 
too.” 

Lady Car followed him with her wistful eyes. They 
were not full of admiring delight, as when a mother 
watches her children going out with their father, proud 
of both him and them, and of their love for one another. 
What it must be to have a life without complications, 
full of unity, in which a woman can feel like that! 
Carry longed to whisper in her child’s ear, to bid him. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


39 


oh ! to be good, to mind what Beau said to him, to be- 
have like a gentleman to one who was so kind — so kind ! 
But she had to let him go without that warning, fear- 
ing that he would be disrespectful and come back in 
disgrace, though Edward was so gentle with him and 
never complained, except to say that he would want a 
tight hand. How well she knew that he wanted a tight 
hand! and how certain she was that it was not from 
her he would get that needful restraint! And from 
whom, then? At school, from some master who would 
know nothing about him, nor give him credit for the 
complications in his lot, his having no father. Perhaps, 
she said to herself in her troubled thoughts, it is better 
for a boy to have any kind of a father than no father 
at all. His father would have flogged him, had no 
mercy upon him, taught him to swear and swagger and 
ride wild horses and run wild about the country. 
Would that have been better? She stopped, with a 
shudder, unable to pursue the question. Better — oh, 
heavens ! But for her what would it have been ? She 
turned to meet little Janet’s large eyes flxed upon her, 
and started with alarm and a kind of horror. It seemed 
to her that the child must have read her thoughts. 

“Are you cold, mozer?” Janet said. Though she was 
eight, she still had difficulties with the “ th,” difficulties 
perhaps rather of a foreigner than a child. 

“No, dear,” said Lady Car, again shuddering, but 
smiling upon the little girl. “It is not at all cold.” 

“ Mozer, take me out wiz you, since Tom has gone 


40 


LADY CAR: 


wiz Beau. I don’t want to go out with nurse. I want 
to be wiz you.” 

“ Dear,” said Carry, wooing her little daughter for a 
favorable reply with soft caresses, ‘‘isn’t Beau kind to 
Tom ? Don’t you love Beau ?” 

The child searched her face, as children do, in an un- 
conscious but penetrating search for motives unknown. 
Janet saw that her mother was wistful and unassured, 
though she did not probably know how to name these 
motives. “I do well enough,” she said. “I don’t 
think of him. Mozer, take me out wiz you.” 

And this was all that could be got out of Janet. The 
black brow and the dark hair made her look so much 
more resolute and determined than usual that poor 
Carry was almost afraid of her little girl, and believed 
that she hid beneath that careless answer thoughts and 
feelings which were quite determined and well-assured. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


41 


CHAPTER lY. 

The house was found after a great many not unpleas- 
urable researches — little expeditions, now and then, 
which Lady Caroline and her husband took together, 
with reminiscences of their first honeymoon travels, 
which had been so sweet. She forgot, as a woman is so 
ready to do, all the little deceptions and disappointments 
of the intervening years, and when they found at last 
the very thing they wanted, the elation and exhilaration 
of a new beginning entered fully into Carry’s mind. 
If Edward had shown himself too contented with his 
life, too little ambitious, too indifferent to any stimulant, 
there was something in the fact of being unsettled, of 
having no certain motive of his life, of moving about 
constantly from one place to another, which would very 
well account for that. But when he was no longer sub- 
ject to interruption, when his time and his thoughts 
were free, who could doubt that a new spring of energy 
would burst forth ? In the old days, when they had 
first met, he had been full of projects. Was not that 
one of the charms that had caught her girlish heart? 
He had so fully meant to make himself a great influence 
in the world, to help to sway the course of events, to 
make the world a better place. They had talked of 


.42 


LADY CAR: 


that before even they talked of love — and her enthu- 
siasm had been roused and fired by his. He had told 
her — how well she remembered ! — that it was a mistake 
of dull minds to think that it was hard to obtain an in- 
fluence upon one’s fellow-men. On the contrary, if you 
are but in earnest — in such earnest that none can mis- 
take your sincerity and true feeling — then the response, 
especially of the young, especially of the working peo- 
ple, whom it was of so much importance to influence for 
good, is most ready, almost immediate. So he said, 
discoursing for hours as they wandered about the Swiss 
valley in which they had met, Carry Lindores all in a 
flame of enthusiastic listening, responding with her 
whole heart. What a beautiful lot it had seemed to 
her to share this work and this life of this new crusader, 
this chief of men ! She was not Lady Caroline then, 
but a poor little girl in a faded frock, her father far out 
of the succession, and no grandeur of rank or anything 
else surrounding the wandering family. Carry’s imagi- 
nation went back to that moment with a leap, ignoring, 
oh, so thankfully ! all that had gone between. She had 
hardly done much with her unfaithfulness to congeal 
her Edward’s enthusiasm, to turn him from his hopeful- 
ness to misanthropy and pessimism. He had fallen 
into apathy because he had been forsaken and unhappy. 
But now everything was to begin anew — a settled home 
on English ground, a position of his own in which his 
leisure and his peace should be undisturbed and his 
mind free to throw itself into the old studies. Who 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 43 

could doubt that with all this his energy and his enthu- 
siasm would come back to him again ? 

The house was near one of the charming little towns 
of Surrey. It was on the slope of a hill, a house partly 
antique for beauty, and with a new part built on behind, 
happily out of sight, for comfort. A wide landscape of 
breezy undulations stretched before the windows ; the 
town, upon another low hill, all its red roofs picturesque- 
ly outlined among the trees, stood out a charming ob- 
ject in the view, not near enough to add any association 
of noise or gossip. The very railway ran in a cutting, 
invisible, though near enough to be exceedingly conven- 
ient, nothing but a puff of steam showing now and then 
over the trees. The landscape embraced, as it were, 
two worlds — heather and fir-trees on one side, luxuriant 
English cornfields, woods, and villages on the other. 
The altitude of their hillside was not great, but, as there 
was nothing greater about it, it might have been Mont 
Blanc for the feeling of wide atmosphere and sky ; yet 
they were within a mile or two of the little country town, 
and within an hour and a half of London. What could 
be more delightful, combining every advantage? Carry 
had all the delight of a bride in furnishing her house — 
nay, of a bridegroom too, for one of her chief cares was 
to fit up a study for Beaufort, in which every taste 
should be satisfied. Though she was by nature so gentle 
and yielding a woman, she it was who was the purveyor^ 
of everything, who had the purse in her hands. The 
only thing upon which Beaufort had made a stand at 


44 


LADY CAE: 


the time of his marriage was this — that the money which 
was hers should remain with her, that he should have 
nothing to do with its expenditure. He had his own 
little income, which was very small, yet sufficed for his 
personal wants. He lived a fairy life, without any 
necessity for money, his house kept for him, his living 
all arranged, everything that he wanted or could desire 
coming without a thought ; but he preserved his feeling 
of independence by having nothing to do with the 
expenditure. Thus Carry combined everything in her 
own person, the bride and the bridegroom — even some- 
thing of the mother. Her drawing-room was fitted up 
according to all the new lights. She had weaknesses 
towards the sesthetic, and something of the delicacy of 
those heroines of Mr. Du Maurier whose bibelots are 
their religion, and who cannot be happy in a room which 
has curtains not of the right tint. But even the anxiety 
to secure everything right in the drawing-room was 
secondary to her anxiety about the library, which was to 
be Beaufort’s room, the future centre of all his occupa- 
tions. He had himself a number of books laid up in 
various stores, and they had ^bought a number more in 
their wanderings — fine old examples in delicate old 
vellum-like ivory and luxurious editions. Carry was 
occupied for weeks in arranging them, in procuring the 
right kind of bookcases, and hanging and decorating 
the room in just the subdued beauty which is appro- 
priate for a place of study. There was one great win- 
dow commanding the finest view, there was another 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 45 

looking into a sunny nook of the garden. The writing- 
table stood within reach of the fire, and near that sunny 
window, so that it might always command both warmth 
and light. The chairs were few, but luxurious to sit in, 
and moving at a touch, without noise, upon the deep, 
mossy softness of the carpet. The bookcases were in- 
laid and exquisite with lines of delicate sculpture and 
gilding between the shelves, out of which the mellow 
gold of the old bindings and the sober background of 
Russia leather and the tempered ivory of the vellum 
showed like a picture. He had not even seen it till it 
was completed. Ho lover ever spent upon his lady’s 
boudoir more tender care and delicate fancy than Carry 
lavished upon her husband’s study. When they went 
down finally to take possession of Easton Manor there 
were various things incomplete in the rest of the house, 
but this was perfect. She took him by the arm and led 
him to the door. “ This is my present to you, Edward,” 
she said, a little breathless with happiness and anxiety 
to know if it would please him. At this period when 
furniture is supposed to make so great a part of our 
comfort, the moment was intense — would it please him, 
after all ? 

It did please him, or, at least, he graciously declared 
it did, with an enthusiasm perhaps a little strained ; but 
Carry, who was half crying with joy and pleasure, never 
found this out, if, indeed, there was anything to find out. 
She ran about the room, pointing out everything — all 
the details of the arrangements — the drawers for papers, 


46 


LADY GAR: 


the portfolios for prints, the shelves that could be filled 
at pleasure, the space that still was vacant to be filled 
up. Everything that heart could desire was in this 
dilettante shrine. There was a little picture on the 
mantelpiece, an original, a lovely little Fra Angelico, in 
the daintiest of carved shrines, which good -luck had 
thrown in their way in Italy — a gem for an emperor’s 
closet. He gave a little cry when he saw this. Carry, 
your own picture — the one you love best !” 

I shall love it better here than anywhere else,” said 
Carry, falling a-weeping and a-laughing with a joy that 
was not hysterical, but only driven to the bounds of all 
things to find expression. She was so happy! She 
had never in all her life been so happy before. In her 
own house, her own home, all hers and his, the sanctuary 
of their joint life to come. When a woman comes to 
this climax of happiness, she generally does so more 
thoroughly with her arrilre-pensee than a man. Only 
one thing could have made Carry’s bliss more exquisite 
— if he had done it for her — and yet, on the whole, I am 
not sure that to have done it for him was not a higher 
pleasure still. Little Janet had held by her mother’s 
dress, coming into the new, strange house, and thus had 
been swept into this rapture without intention, and stood 
gazing at it with great eyes, half wondering, half critical. 
What there was to cry about Janet did not know. She 
was a spectator, though she was only a child, and broke 
the spell. Lady Car felt more than Beaufort did what 
the interruption was. And thus the edge was a little 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


47 


taken off her delight. But in the evening, when Janet 
was happily in bed, she led her husband back to his 
beautiful room. He would rather, perhaps, as a matter 
of fact, have remained in the uncompleted drawing-room 
with her. A thing which is incomplete has a charm of 
its own. He was suggesting various things which were 
needed to fill up, and enjoying the occupation. He had 
even made a few rough sketches, rough, yet full of 
“ feeling,” showing with only a line or two how many 
improvements could still be made. She was delighted 
by the suggestions, but a little impatient, longing to 
make sure that he had seen all the many luxuries pro- 
vided for himself. She took his arm when he had 
shown her where he would place the little fantastic 
Venetian etagere. “Yes, Edward; but I don’t want to 
stay here any longer ; I want to spend the first evening 
in the library, in your own room.” 

“In the library?” he said, with a slight vexation; 
then, recovering himself, he followed her impulse with 
the best grace in the world. Poor Carry ! it would ill 
become him not to humor her. “ But is there a lamp 
there ?” he said. She laughed for pleasure at the ques- 
tion. A lamp ! There was the most beautiful arrange* 
ment of lights which the art of that period had yet de- 
vised. The reign of the electric light had not begun, 
but candles with every kind of silvery shading that had 
been then invented were round the walls, and the light 
was so soft, so equable, so diffused, that no electric light- 
ing could have been more perfect. “ You who are so 


48 


LADY CAB: 


fond of light, how could you think I would forget that 
she said. 

‘‘You never forget anything; you are my good an- 
gel,” he said, holding her in his arms: the perfect 
tenderness and the perfect taste went to his heart. 
“You are too good to me — and all this is far too good 
for a useless fellow who never did anything.” 

“It is the circumstances that are to blame for that,” 
she said, vaguely. “You have never had the leisure 
and the ease that is necessary for great work.” 

He laughed a little, and perhaps colored too, could 
she have seen it in the flattering, soft glow of the shaded 
light. “ I am afraid,” he said, “ that a man who is over- 
come by circumstances is rather a poor sort of creature ; 
but we won’t enter into that.” 

“ No, indeed,” she said ; “ there is no such question 
before the house, Edward. Now sit down in your own 
chair, and let us talk. How many talks we are to have 
here ! This is the place where we shall discuss everything, 
and you will tell me how your thoughts are taking 
shape, and read me a page here and there, and here I’ll 
bring my little troubles to be calmed down, but never 
to interrupt anything, you may trust me for that.” 

“ My love,” he cried, “ I trust you for everything ; 
but, Carry, I am sadly afraid you are preparing disap- 
pointment for yourself. I am by no means sure that I 
could write anything were I to try ; and as for plans — ” 

“Don’t say that, Edward. Don’t you remember how 
we used to talk in the dark old Kander Thai long ago ? 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


49 


You had planned it out all so clearly. I think 1 could 
write down the plan, and even the names of the chapters, 
if you have forgotten. But I am sure you have not 
forgotten. It has only been suspended for want of time 
— for want of the books you needed — for want — oh ! if 
I might flatter myself so far? — for want, perhaps, of 
me ; but that’s the vainest thing to say.” 

“ It is the only truth in the whole matter,” he said — 
“for want of you ! I think I must have invented that 
plan on the spot to please you.” 

“ Hush, hush !” said Carry, putting up her hand to his 
mouth. “Don’t blaspheme. You wore full of it; it 
was a new world to me. First to think that I Ttnew a 
man with such great things in his mind, then that he 
would talk to me about it, then that my enthusiasm 
helped him on a little, that he looked to me for sympa- 
thy. Edward,” she said, with a little nervous laugh, 
changing color and casting down her eyes, “ I wrote 
some little verses about it in the old days, but never fln- 
ished them, and this morning I found them and scrib- 
bled a little more.” 

“My love, my love !” he cried, in a troubled tone, in 
which love, shame, compunction, and even a far-off 
trembling of ridicule had place. What could he say to 
this ? The romance, the sentiment, the good faith, the 
enthusiasm, altogether overwhelmed him. He could 
have laughed, he could have wept, he did not know 
what to say. How he despised himself for being so 
much below her expectations, for being, as he said him- 
4 


50 


LADY CAE: 


self, such a poor creature! He changed color; her 
moist eyes, her little verses, filled him with shame and 
penitence, yet a rueful amusement too. The verses 
were very pretty, perhaps ; he did not despise them, it 
was only himself whom he despised. 

“ My darling, that’s so long ago ! I was a fool, puffed 
up by your enthusiasm and by seeing that you believed 
in me. A young man, don’t you know, is always some- 
thing of an actor when he begins to see that a girl has 
faith in him. It is — how long. Carry ? — fifteen years 
ago.” 

“ And what of that ?” she said. “ If I could pick up 
my little thread, as I tell you, how much more easily 
could you pick up your great one? This was why I 
wanted to be within reach of London, within reach of 
the great libraries. It is quite easy to run up for the 
day to refer to anything you want — indeed, I might do 
it for you if you were very busy. And I can see that 
you have no interruptions, Edward. We must settle 
our hours and everything from that point of view.” 

He felt himself at liberty to laugh as she came down 
to this more familiar ground. I fear,” he said, “ all 
my plans were in the air — they never came to execution 
of any kind. I don’t know even, as I told you, whether 
I can write at allP 

Edward !” she cried, in an indignant tone. 

‘‘ Well, my love ” — the flattery went to his heart, not- 
withstanding all he knew against it — “ that is the easi- 
est of the matter, to be sure; but everybody can write 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


51 


nowadays, and why should the world listen to me more 
than another ? Besides, my favorite questions of social 
economy, as against political, have all been exploites by 
other hands since then.” 

‘^Not by other hands so capable as yours.” 

‘‘ Oh, Carry !” he cried, with a laugh in which there 
was pleasure as well as a little ridicule, ‘‘I fear you 
have a quite unwarrantable confidence in me; I am 
only — ” 

“ Hush !” she said, again putting up her hand to his 
mouth ; “ I don’t want to hear your opinion of yourself. 
I am a better judge than you are on that point. Be- 
sides, let us hear who have written on that question ?” 
She sat quite upright in her chair. Bring them for- 
ward, and let them be judged.” 

I cannot bring forth a whole school of writers be- 
fore your tribunal, iny lady. Well,” he said, laughing, 
‘there’s Buskin for one — who has said all I once want- 
ed to say, in an incomparable way, and gone a great deal 
further than I could go.” 

“Ah!” she cried; “that is just the whole matter. 
Mr. Buskin is incomparable, as you say, but he goes a 
great deal too far. .He is a poet. People adore him, 
but don’t put^ serious faith in him. Mr. Buskin has 
nothing to do with it, Edward ; he could not forestall 
youP 

“ Ho, no more than the sun could forestall a farthing 
candle. Carry, my dear, don't make me blush for my- 
self. Come,” he added, “ let me see the little verses — 


52 


LADY CAR: 


for the moment that is more to the point. Perhaps 
when you have showed me how you have picked up 
your threads I may see how to pick up mine.” 

“ Should you really like to see them, Edward ? They 
are nothing ; they are very little verses indeed. I have 
left them in my writing-book.” 

‘‘Get them, then,” he said, opening the door for her 
with a smile. Poor Lady Car! She raised a happy 
face to him as she passed, with eyes glistening, still a 
little moist, very bright, full of sweetness and gentle 
agitation. The soft sound of her dress, sweeping after 
her, the graceful movement, the gracious turn of the 
head, were all so many exquisite additional details to the 
exquisite room, so perfect in every point, in which she 
had housed him. But Beaufort’s face was full of uneasi- 
ness.and perplexity. He had floated so far away from 
those innocent days in the Kander Thai. He had ceased 
to believe in the panaceas that had seemed all-powerful 
to him then. The wrongs of political economy and the 
rights of the helpless had ceased to occupy his mind. 
He had become one of the helpless himself, and yet had 
drifted and been not much the worse. Now he had 
drifted into the most charming, sunshiny, land-locked 
harbor, where no flerce wind could trouble him more. 
He had no desire to invent labors and troubles for him- 
self, to spend his strength in putting up beacons and 
lighthouses to which the people whom they were in- 
tended to help would pay no attention. He opened 
one of the windows and looked out upon the night, upon 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


53 


the soft, undulating landscape, half-lighted by a misty 
moon. Everything looked like peace out of doors; 
peace and every tranquil pleasure that the soul could, 
desire were within. He gave an impatient laugh at 
himself and his wife and life in general, as he stood 
cooling his hot forehead, looking out, waiting her return. 
He was quite contented ; why should he be goaded forth 
to fight with windmills which he no longer believed to 
be knights in armor ? Don Quixote disenchanted, ready 
himself to burn all his chevalier books and see the fun 
of his misadventures, but urged to take the field by 
some delicate Dulcinea, could not have been more em- 
barrassed and disturbed. It was too annoying to be 
amusing, and too tender and beautiful either to be angry 
with or to laugh at. What, under these circumstances, 
was a man who had long abandoned the heroic to do ? 


54 


LADY CAB: 


CHAPTER V. 

After a great deal of travelling in the most beautiful 
scenery in the world, and after the excitement of set- 
tling down, of furnishing, of arranging, of putting all 
your future life in order, there is apt to follow a certain 
blank, a somewhat disconcerting consciousness that all 
expectation is now over, when you are left alone with 
everything completed to live that life to which you have 
been for so long looking forward. Lady Car was very 
conscious of this in her sensitive and delicate soul, al- 
though there was for a long time a sustaining force of 
expectation of another kind in her that kept her up. 
All the people in the neighborhood, it is needless to 
say, made haste to call upon Lady Caroline Beaufort ; 
and she found them a little flat, as country society is apt 
to be. She went out with her husband a number of 
times to dinner-parties, specially convoked in her honor, 
and did not find them enlivening. She was one of 
those women who never get rid of the ideal, and al- 
ways retain a vague hope in coming to a new place, in 
beginning anything new, that the perfect is at last to be 
revealed to her — the good society, the spirits d'elite^ 
whom she has always longed for but never yet encoun- 
tered. She did not encounter them here, any more than 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


66 


in other places, and a sense of dull certainty settled 
down upon her after a while which was depressing. 
Such impressions are modified when the idealist finds 
out that, however much his or her surroundings may 
lack the superlative, there is always a certain fond of 
goodness and of the agreeable and sympathetic in the 
dullest circle when you come to know it. Surrey, how- 
ever, no more than any other place, discloses these home- 
ly, compensating qualities all at once, and the period 
of disenchantment came. Everything settled down ; 
even the landscape became less wide, less attractive, the 
woods less green, the cottage roofs less picturesque. 
The real encroached upon the glamour of the imagination 
at every corner, and Carry felt herself settle down. It 
is a process which every dreamer has to go through. 

But it was a long time before her mind would con- 
sent to the other settling down, which took place slowly 
but surely as the days and the years went on. Beaufort 
was in reality a little stirred up at first by the revival 
of so many old plans and thoughts, though it was in 
her mind, not in his, that they revived. He was con- 
strained by a hundred subtle influences to resume at 
least the attitude of a student. Her verses, which were 
so pretty, the gentle feminine music of a true though 
small singer, were such a reproach to him as words can- 
not describe. She had picked up her thread, so slight, 
so fragile as it was, and resumed her little melodious 
strain with enthusiasm not less, but greater, than when 
she had dropped it in the despair of parting with her 


56 


LADY CAB: 


hero. The little poem brought back to him faint, unde- 
finable echoes of that past which seemed to be a thou- 
sand years off. What was it that he had intended to do 
which she remembered so well, which to him was like a 
forgotten dream ? He could not pick up his thread ; 
he had smiled at himself by turns during the progress 
of the intervening centuries over the futility of his for- 
gotten ambition. “ I, too, used to mean great things,’’ 
he had said, with a laugli and a sigh, to the younger 
men ; the sigh had been fictitious, the laugh more genu- 
ine. What a fool any man was to think that he could 
accomplish any revolution ! What a silly business to 
think that with your feeble hand you could upset the 
economy of ages ! The conceit, too ! but he had been 
very young, he had said to himself, and youth is an ex- 
cuse for everything. That any faithful memory should 
preserve the image of him as he was in those old days 
of delusion, ambition, and self-opinion, had seemed in- 
credible to him. He was half affronted, as well as aston- 
ished, that Carry should have retained that visionary 
delusion in her mind ; but still her expectation was a 
curious stimulus. And the first steps into which he was 
forced by it deluded her as well as himself. He began 
to arrange his books, to search, as he persuaded himself, 
for old notes, a search which occupied a great deal of 
time and involved many discoveries, amusing to him, 
delightful to her. For weeks together this investiga- 
tion, through all manner of old note-books, occupied them 
both and kept Carry very happy. She was full of ex- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


57 


citement as to what each new collection would bring 
forth. He had a great many note-books, dating not only 
from his college days, but even from his school-time, 
and there was hardly one of them out of which some 
little fossil of the past, some scrap of verse or transla- 
lation, did not come. Carry, delighted, listened to them 
all as to so many revelations. She traced him back to 
his boyhood, and found a pleasure beyond description 
in that record of all his intellectual vagaries, and the 
hopes and ambitions they expressed. Perhaps had she 
read them calmly with her own eyes, although those 
eyes were full of glamour, faint lights of criticism might 
have arisen and revealed the imperfections. But he 
read them to her in his mellow voice, with little expla- 
nations, reminiscences not disagreeable to himself, and 
which suggested other and more lengthened recollections, 
all of which were delightful to his admiring wife. It 
was not till Christmas, when she suddenly woke up to 
the passage of time by the startling reminder of little 
Tom’s return from school for the holidays, that she re- 
membered how much time had passed. To be brought 
suddenly to a pause in the midst of one’s enthusiasm is 
always disagreeable, and the thought had been uneasy 
in Carry’s mind for several days before she put it timid- 
ly into words. 

It has all been delightful,” she said. To trace you 
back through all your school-boy time and at college is 
so nice that I know I have been persuading you to make 
the most of it for my sake. But, Edward, you must 


68 


LADY CAB: 


not humor me any more. I feel that it is wasting your 
time.” 

“ No,” he said, when one has to pick up one’s thread 
it is best to do it thoroughly. This will all be of service, 
every word of it.” 

I see, you mean to begin with a retrospect,” she 
cried, brightening again. 

“ Not so much as a retrospect,” he said, with a twinge 
of conscience, “ but one’s early ideas, though they are 
often absurd, are very suggestive.” 

‘‘ Oh, not absurd,” she cried. It wounded her to hear 
such a word applied to anything of his. 

But little Tom had come home for his holidays, which 
showed that it was four or five months since the settling 
down. They had taken possession of Easton at the end 
of August. Tom came home very manly and grown up 
after his first half ” at school. He was close upon 
eleven, and he had a very high opinion of his own position 
and prospects. His school was a large preparatory one, 
where things were done as much as possible on the 
model of Eton, which was the goal of all the little boy’s 
ambitions. It was a little disappointing after the first 
genuine moment of pleasure in coming home, and the 
ecstatic sense of being a very great man to Janet, to find 
that after all Janet was only a little girl and did not 
understand the half of what he told her. He felt the 
want of male society very much upon the second day, 
and to think that there would not be a fellow to speak 
to for a whole month damped the delightful prospect of 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


59 


being his own master for that time which had smiled 
so much upon him. Janet, it is scarcely necessary to 
say, gave a boundless faith to her brother, and listened 
to the tale of his achievements and of what the fellows 
did with an interest unalloyed by criticism. Her mouth 
and her eyes were full of a round O ! of wonder and 
admiration. She never tired of hearing of the feats and 
the scrapes and the heroic incidents of school. To dazzle 
her so completely was something ; but a mind accus- 
tomed to the company of the nobler sex soon tires of the 
tameness of feminine society, and, with the candor of his 
age, Tom very soon made it apparent that he was bored. 

“ There’s a lot of houses about,” he said. Aren’t 
there any fellows down there, or there” — he pointed to 
distant roofs and groups of chimneys appearing at in- 
tervals from among the leafless trees — that one could 
speak to ? It’s awfully dull here after knowing so many 
at school.” 

There are some children at that white house with 
the blue roof,” said Janet, ‘‘but they’re not good 
enough, nurse says ; and I don’t know nobody to play 
wiz,” the little girl added, rather wistfully — she made 
all her “ th’s into “ z’s ” still — “ I only take walks.” 

“ Children !” said Tom, contemptuously. “ I wasn’t 
asking about children. I meant fellows at school. If 
they’re at a good school they’re good enough. I’ll soon 
And out. When a fellow has been out in the world 
and goes to school, you don’t suppose he minds what 
nurse says.” 


60 


LADY GAB: 


“ Oh, but nurse says a great, great many zings,” said 
Janet. ‘‘ She says Easton’s a little, poky house, and that 
we should be in our own family place. What’s a family 
place ? Do you know ? It is something fazer is buried 
in,” the little girl added after a moment, with a little 
thrill of solemnity. Tom burst into a laugh, in the 
pleasure of his superior knowledge. 

You are a little ass, Jan ! Of course I know. My 
family place is a grand one, with a big tower, and a flag 
on it when I’m at home — like the queen at Windsor! 
The worst is I’m never at home; but I shall be when 
I’m big, and then sha’n’t we have times ! I’ve told a lot 
of fellows. I’ll have them up to my place in Scotland 
for the shooting, don’t you know ?” 

Janet only gave him a look out of her largej light eyes. 

Girls don’t shoot,” she said. I don’t want to be 
at your shooting. Tom, do you remember fazer ? He’s 
buried there.” 

“Oh, humbug! he’s buried in the churchyard, where 
all the dead people are buried. Of course I remember 
him. What’s that got to do with it? I remember 
having a ride on his big, black mare, such a big, tall 
beast, and nobody could ride her except me and him, 
you know. He was behind when I rode her, and she 
carried us both as easy as a lamb. Old Duncan told me 
so — as easy as a lamb — because she knew who was her 
master !” the boy cried, with the color mounting up into 
his cheeks. He began to switch the chairs with a little 
cane he had in his hand, and bade them to “ get on ” and 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


61 


‘^gee-up,” to Janet’s considerable disturbance, for she had 
already learned that a boy’s boots were apt to be muddy, 
and that chairs covered with brocade, and carved and 
gilded, were not meant to be ridden or to gee-up. 

Don’t, Tom,” she said ; they’re mozer’s pretty 
chairs.” 

“Oh, bother!” cried the boy, “where’s mother? I 
want to tell her lots of things, but I won’t if she’s so 
particular about her chairs and stays so long away.” 

“She’s in the library with Beau,” said Janet; “they 
are always in the library. It is so pretty. Mozer likes 
it better than the drawing-room. But they will soon 
come in for tea.” 

“ I say,” cried Tom, “ do you have tea here always, 
not in the nursery ? Oh, I say ! I am not going to stand 
that. I know what they do at afternoon tea. You have 
a small piece of bread-and-butter, or perhaps an atom of 
cake, and you mustn’t make any crumbs or enjoy your- 
self at all. You should see our teas at school. There’s 
sometimes three kinds of jam, and in summer the fel- 
lows have strawberries, as many as ever they like, and 
this half Suramerfield major was allowed cold partridge.” 

“For tea?” cried Janet, with ever so many notes of 
admiration. 

“ Oh, his people send him such whopping hampers,” 
said Tom; “he could never get through it all if he 
didn’t have it for tea.” 

“ Nasty meat 1” said little Janet, with a grimace ; “ but 
the jam is very nice,” she added, with a sigh. “ There’s no 


62 


LADY CAE: 


nursery when you’re gone. Mozer gives us very nice 
tea and plenty of cake ; but she thinks I am better down- 
stairs, not always with nurse.” 

‘‘ And do you think so ? You were always a little — ” 

^^It’s nice when mozer talks to me and not to Beau,” 
said Janet, with reluctance. The grievance of the many 
times when the reverse was the case was implied, not 
put into words. ^^But when there is you and me it 
will be very nice,” cried the little girl. There is a 
plain little table in the corner, not carved or anything. 
It has a cover on, but that comes off, and I am allowed 
to have it to paint pictures upon and play at anything 
you like. We’ll have it between us in the corner, as if it 
was a little party,” said little Janet, ‘^and they will 
never mind us, as long as we don’t make much noise.” 

‘‘ But I want to make a noise. I want to have a real 
square meal. It isn’t good for a fellow, when he’s 
growing, to be kept short of his grub, I want — ” 

Oh, Tom, what a horrible, horrible word !” 

^^Much you know !” cried the boy. “ Fellows’ sisters 
all like it — to learn the same words as we say. But if 
you think I’m coming back from Hall’s, where they 
have all Eton rules, to sit as quiet as a mouse in the draw- 
ing-room, and have afternoon tea like an old fogy, I 
sha’n’t, and there’s an end of it,” asserted Tom. 

Lady Car came in as he gave forth this determination 
in a loud voice. She came in very softly, as was her 
wont, with the soft trail of her satin gown on the soft, 
mossy carpet, on which her light steps made no sound. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


63 


In her eyes was still the dreamy smile of her pleasure in 
all the details and chronicles of a school-boy life, so ele- 
vated and ethereal, its dreams and its visions and its 
high purposes. She was imagining to herself a poem in 
which it might all be set forth in chapters or cantos. 
‘‘ The Dawning Genius ” would be the title of the first. 
She saw before her the spiritual being, all thought and 
enthusiasm, making a hundred chimeras divine — the 
boy-poet, the heir of all the ages, the fine fiower of 
human promise. Half the adoring wife and half the 
woman of genius she came in softly, with delicate 
charms of verses already sounding in her mind, and the 
scheme of the poem rising before her. Not like the 
“ Prelude oh, no ; but the development, the dawn (a 
far more lovely word), the dawning of genius, of which 
in its time it might be her delightful mission to record 
the completion too. 

She was roused from this vision by the noisy, boyish 
voice. ‘‘1 sha’n’t, and there’s an end of it,” cried Tom, 
and she raised her dreamy eyes, startled to see the boy 
standing red in the face and defiant, his legs apart, his 
sturdy little square figure relieved against the window. 
How different from the ideal boy of whom she had been 
dreaming! the real boy, her son. 

They both looked at her with an alarmed aspect, not 
knowing what would happen. Poor Carry was the gen- 
tlest of mothers. She never punished them, never scold- 
ed, but yet, no one could tell why, they had always the 
air of being afraid of her. They looked at her now 


64 


LADY CAB: 


as children might have looked who were accustomed to 
be sent into solitary confinement, shut up in a dark closet, 
or some other torture. Tom’s voice fell in a moment, 
and Janet came out in defence like the little woman in 
a weatherhouse, when the little man skulks in-doors dis- 
concerted by the good weather. Janet came forward 
with a little hand raised. ‘‘ Mozer, it was not naughti- 
ness. It was because he has been out in the world and 
knows things different from me.” 

‘‘Yes?” said Lady Car, smiling upon them; “and 
what are the things this man of the world knows ? To 
be sure, dear, he must be greatly in advance of you and 
me.” 

The children were all the more abashed by this speech, 
though its tone was so gentle. They stared at her for 
a moment with their father’s face, dark and stolid, the 
likeness intensified in Tom by the sullen alarm of his 
look. She put out her hand to him, to draw him close 
to her. “ What is it,” she said, “ my little boy ?” She 
was, to tell the truth, rather afraid of him, too. 

“It’s nothing,” Tom replied. “It’s something she’s 
said.” 

“ Oh, Tom,” cried Janet, with a sense of injury. 
“ Mozer, he says they have such nice teas at school — 
strawberries, and sometimes cold partridge, and whop- 
ping hampers.” 

“ My dear !” 

“ That’s how the fellows talk,” said Tom. “ That’s 
not the right thing for a girl.” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


65 


“Was the cold partridge in the whopping hamper?” 
said a voice behind. “ Carry, I don’t wonder the boy’s 
indignant. You have sent him no hampers. A first 
half at school and not so much as a big cake. I feel 
for Tom. Never mind, old fellow; you see she never 
was at school.” 

They had both turned round their anxious faces to 
him as lie came in. They were instinctively jealous of 
him. Yet both turned with a certain relief, or at least 
Tom did so, who was aware that Beau was one of his 
own faction, a man, against the sway of the everlasting 
feminine. Janet took the hand which the mother had 
stretched out towards her boy and clung to it, drawing 
herself close into Lady Car’s skirts. Beau was not of 
her faction in any sense of the word. The little girl 
pulled her mother’s face towards her, and whispered 
her tale into Carry’s ear. 

“ To have your tea up-stairs ! Why, doesn’t he w^nt 
to be with us, dear, after being away so long? You 
shall have what you like best, my dear children. If 
you really prefer the nursery to the drawing-room and 
my company.” 

“ He says they have three kinds of jam,” said Janet, 
in her mother’s ear, “ and do whatever they like,” she 
added, after a pause. 

Lady Car gave her husband a look, which the children 
noted though they did not understand. There was a 
slight appeal in it and some relief. He had said that 
she must keep them with her, as much as if he had not 
5 


66 


LADY CAM: 


been there ; that he would not separate her, not for an 
hour, not for a meal, from her children ; and she had 
thought it her duty to have them there, though their 
presence and his together kept Carry in a harassed con- 
sciousness of the two claims upon her. They concluded 
that mother was not angry with great relief ; but they 
did not understand the guilty satisfaction of Carry in 
finding that they liked the nursery best. 


THE JSEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


67 


CHAPTER VI. 

The time of Tom’s holidays was rather a holiday also 
for Beaufort, who, having got a certain amount of amuse- 
ment out of the note-books and their record of school- 
life, was beginning to be bored by himself, and to think, 
under his breath, what a little prig and ass he had been 
in his boyish days, and how astounding it was that Carry 
should take it all in with such undoubting faith. He 
was a little of a philosopher in his idle way, and Carry 
began to be a sometimes disconcerting but often amus- 
ing problem to him. He laughed softly sometimes when 
he was by himself to see how seriously she took him, 
and how much his youthful superiority impressed her. 
It had not been in his intention when he unearthed the 
note-books to increase, as he had certainly done, her ad- 
miration, and, consequently, her expectations, of himself. 
He had hoped, if anything, to beguile her a little from 
the pursuit of results, to make her less in earnest about 
the great work on which she had set her heart. But 
his expedient had not succeeded. She was more than 
ever bent upon the fulfilling of that early promise which 
was so beautiful and so wonderful in her eyes. Beaufort 
was half flattered, half vexed by this result. It is hard to 
resent a woman’s admiration, even if it is of something 


68 


LADY CAB: 


which is no longer yourself. It softened his heart, but 
it embarrassed him more than ever, as it made her more 
and more sure. He took advantage of Tom with a little 
secret chuckle to himself behind backs. Tom amused 
this philosopher too. He liked to draw him out, to 
watch the movements of character in him, even to spec- 
ulate what kind of a man it had been that had produced 
this child. He must be like his father, Beaufort said to 
himself, without any sentiment even of animosity tow- 
ards Carry’s husband. Certainly he had got the better 
of that man. He had obliterated Torrance, as it were, 
from the face of the earth ; but he had no such feeling 
as Carry had about Torrance’s life and Torrance’s money. 
He took it all much more calmly than she could do, not 
even thinking of the curiousness of the succession which 
made him owe all his comfort and happiness to Tor- 
rance. Tom, however, was the subject of various spec- 
ulations in his stepfather’s mind. If this was what the 
little Torrance was modified by Lindores, what must the 
original have been ? And what would this one turn to ? 
an ordinary country gentleman, no better or worse than 
his neighbors, or what? A vague sense in his mind that 
there might be future trouble to Carry in the child’s 
development moved him mildly — for the distance be- 
tween childhood and manhood seems long, looking for- 
ward to it, though so short when we look back ; and any 
such danger must be far in the future. It was ratl:^.er 
as a droll little problem, which it was amusing to 
study, that Mr. Beaufort looked at Tom; but for that 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


69 


reason, and to free himself a little from the ever- 
increasing pressure of his wife’s solicitude in respect 
to his work and eager anticipation of something from 
him, he took during the holidays the greatest interest 
in the boy, going out with him, sometimes riding, some- 
times driving, sometimes to the meet, where Tom’s 
eagerness was scarcely to be restrained. Mr. Beaufort 
himself did not hunt. He was not an ungraceful horse- 
man for a moderate and mild canter ; but if he had ever 
been possessed of sufficient energy to follow the hounds, 
that energy had long left him. He did not dislike, how- 
ever, to ride to the meet or drive his wife over, Tom 
accompanying them upon his pony. Lady Car thought 
it was nothing less than devotion to her son which in- 
duced him to depart from his studious seclusion on ac- 
count of the boy. She was very grateful to her husband, 
yet deprecated gently: “You are so very, very good 
to Tom ; but I cannot bear to think of all the sacrifices 
you are making for him, Edward, wasting your time, 
which is so much too valuable to be thrown away upon 
a little boy.” 

“ I wish my time were more valuable, to show you 
how willingly I would give it up for anything belong- 
ing to you. Carry, not to say for your boy.” 

Oh, thanks, thanks, dear Edward ; but I can’t have 
you burdened with Tom.” 

“ I like it,” he said. ‘‘ I like — boys.” It was almost 
too much for him to say that he liked this particular 
boy. ‘^And Tom interests me very much,” he added. 


70 


LADY CAM: 


Carry looked at him with a wistful curiosity. A gleam 
of color passed over her face. Was it possible that Tom 
was interesting to such a man as Edward Beaufort ? She 
felt guilty to ask herself that question. She had been 
afraid that Tom was net very interesting, not a child 
to attract any one much who did not belong to him. 
To be sure the child did belong to him, in a sort of a way. 

So you like school, Tom ?” said Beaufort, looking 
down from his tall horse at the little fellow on his 
pony, strenuously keeping up with him. Had Beau- 
fort been a more athletic person, he would have appre- 
ciated more the boy’s determination not to be left a step 
behind. 

‘‘ Well,” said Tom, reflectively, “ I like it, and I don’t 
like it. I think lessons are great rot.” 

“ Oh, do you ?” said his tall companion. 

Don’t you^ Beau ? They don’t teach anything a 
fellow wants. What’s the good of Latin, let alone 
Greek ? They’re what you call dead languages, and we 
don’t want what’s dead. When you’ve got to make 
your living by them it’s different, like Hall’s sons that 
are going to be the schoolmasters when he dies.” 

‘‘ Did you think of all that by yourself, Tom ?” 

“ No,” said the boy, after a stare of a moment and 
some hesitation. ‘‘ It wasn’t me, it was Harrison ma- 
jor. His father’s very rich, and he’s in trade. And 
Harrison says what’s the good of these things. You 
never want them. They’re only an excuse for sending 
in heavy bills, Harrison says.” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


71 


He must be a great authority,” said Mr. Beaufort, 
gravely. 

He knows a deal,” said Tom, reassured, for he had 
some doubts whether Harrison major’s opinions would 
have been received with the deference they deserved. 
“ He’s the biggest fellow in the school, though he’s not 
very swell in learning. But he doesn’t mind. He says 
fellows that are to have plenty of money don’t want it.” 

That’s a frequent opinion of people in trade,” said 
Beaufort. ‘‘I would not put too much faith in it if I 
were you.” 

Eh ?” cried Tom, opening his big, light eyes under 
his dark brows more widely than ever, and staring up 
into his stepfather’s face. 

“ You will have plenty of money, I suppose ?” said 
Beaufort, calmly. 

^^Oh, don’t you know? I’ll be one of the richest 
fellows in Scotland,” cried the boy. 

‘‘ Who told you that, Tom ?” 

“ I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I know it, that’s 
all. It was perhaps only nurse,” he added, with reluc- 
tance ; “ but she’s been to my place, and she knows all 
about it. You can ask her if you haven’t heard.” 

‘‘ So you have got a place, besides being so rich ?” 
Beaufort said, in calm interrogation, without surprise. 

Tom was very much embarrassed by this questioning. 
He stared at his stepfather more than ever. Hasn’t 
mother told you? I thought she told you every- 
thing.” 


72 


LADY CAB: 


So did L But all this about your place I never 
heard. Let’s have the rest of it, Tom.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know that there’s much more,” said the 
boy. “ It’s a great big place with a high tower, and 
a flag flying when I’m at home — like the queen — and 
acres upon acres in the park. It was my father’s, don’t 
you know ? and now it’s mine.” 

“ How old are you, Master Tom ?” 

Eleven in April,” said Tom, promptly. 

“ Then it will be ten years before you have anything 
to say to your place, as you call it. I’ve seen your 
place, Tom. It is not so very much of a place ; as for 
a flag, you know we might mount a flag at Easton if 
we liked, and nobody would mind.” 

Tom’s black brows had gathered, and his eyes looked, 
with that flerceness mingled with fear which belongs 
to childhood, into his stepfather’s face. He was very 
wroth to have his pretensions thus made light of, but 
the habitual faith of his age alarmed him with a sense 
that it might be true. 

“ We’ll mount one this afternoon,” his tormentor 
said; ‘4t will be fun for you and me taking it down 
when your mother goes out for her drive, and hoisting 
it again when she comes back. She deserves a flag bet- 
ter than you do, don’t you think ? Almost as well as 
the queen. The only danger is that the country people 
might take Easton for the Beaufort Arms, and want to 
come in and drink beer. Wliat do you think ?” 

I say, Beau, are you in real earnest about a flag ?” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


73 


“To be sure. I don’t know what you have on yours 
at the Towers, but we have a famous blazon on the 
Beaufort side. We’ll get a square of silk from your 
mother, and paint it as soon as we go in. I forget 
what your arms are, Tom ?” 

“ I don’t know,” said the boy, humbly. “ I never 
heard anything about them. I didn’t know you had 
arms on a flag.” 

“Ah!” said Beaufort, “you see there are a great 
many things you don’t know yet. And about matters 
that concern gentlemen, I wouldn’t advise you either 
to take nurse’s opinion or . that of your young man 
whose father is in trade.” 

Tom rode along by his stepfather’s side in silence 
for some time. He felt much taken down — crushed 
by a superiority which he could not resist — ^yet very 
unwilling to yield. There was always the uncomfort- 
able conviction in his mind that what Beaufort said 
must be true, mingled with the uneasy feeling that 
Beau might be chaflSng all the time, a combination con- 
fusing for every simple mind. Tom was not at all 
willing to give in. He felt instinctively that a flag at 
Easton would turn his own grandeur, which he believed 
in so devoutly, into ridicule : for Easton was not much 
more than a villa, in the suburbs of a little town. At 
the same time he could not but feel that to haul it up 
and down when his mother went out or came in would 
be fun ; and the painting of the flag, with a general 
muddle of paints and means of harbouillage in general, 


74 


LAJDT CAE: 


still greater fun, and the most delightful way of spend- 
ing the afternoon. 

I say, Beau,*’ he asked, after a long interval, what’s 
in your arms, as you call them ? I should like to know.” 

Beaufort laughed. You must not ask what’s in 
them, but what they are, Tom. A fellow of your pre- 
tensions ought to know. Fancy a chatelain in igno- 
rance of such a matter !” 

What’s a chatelain ? You are only laughing at me,” 
cried the boy, with lowering eyebrows. “ It’s a thing 
mother wears at her side, all hanging with silver chains.” 

It’s the master of a place — like what you suppose 
yours to be. My arms are rather too grand for a sim- 
ple gentleman to bear. We quarter the shields of 
France and England,” said Beaufort, gravely, forget- 
ting who his companion was for the moment. Then 
he laughed again. You see, Tom, though I have not 
a castle, I have a flag almost as grand as the queen’s.” 

All this was rather humbling to poor Tom’s pride 
and confusing to his intellect, but he came home full 
of the plan of painting and putting up this wonderful 
flag. There was an old flagstaff somewhere, which had 
been used for the decorations of some school feast. 
Beaufort, much amused, instructed his small assistant 
to paint this in alternate strips of blue and white. 

The colors of the bordure, you know, Tom.” Oh, 
are they ?” cried Tom, determined to pretend to under- 
stand. And Lady Car found him in the early after- 
noon, in a shed appropriated to carpentering behind the 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


75 


house, delightfully occupied about his task, and with 
patches of blue and white all over him from shoe to 
chin. 

What are you doing, Tom she cried. Janet fol- 
lowing stood transfixed, with her eyes widening every 
moment — half with wonder, half with envy. What she 
would have given to paint the staff and herself in imi- 
tation of Tom ! 

“ It’s the colors of the bordure,” said the boy. “ I’m 
doing it for Beau.” 

The colors of what ?” Lady Car was as ignorant^ 
of heraldry as Tom himself. 

“ Have we got a bordure ? and what’s our colors ? and 
I want to know what are the arms, mother. I mean 
my arms ; for I suppose,” he said, pausing in his work 
to look at her, yours are just Beau’s now?” 

“ What does the boy mean ?” said Carry. “ Janet, you 
must not go too near him ; you will spoil your frock. 
Tom, your jacket will never be fit to be seen again.” 

‘‘ I don’t care for my jacket. Mother, look here. 
Beau’s going to put up a fiag for you like the queen, 
and I’m doing the stick. But I want to know about 
my own shield and my colors, and if I’ve got a bor- 
dure, and if we’re in quarters, or what. I want to 
know about the fiag at the Towers.” 

Lady Car made a step backward, as if she had re- 
ceived a blow. ‘‘ There was no fiag at the Towers — 

I mean there were no arms upon it. There were no — 
who put such nonsense into your head, Tom ?” 


76 


LADY GAB: 


It’s not nonsense. Beau told me ; he’s going to give 
me a lesson how to do it. He knows all about it. He 
says it’s no use asking nurse or Harrison major, whose 
father is in trade. It’s only gentlemen that have this 
sort of thing. Mother, have I got a bordure ?” 

“ Mozer,” said little Janet, please buy him a bordure.” 

Poor Carry was not fond of any allusion to her for- 
mer home. She was glad to laugh at the little girl’s pe- 
tition, though with a tremor that was half hysterical. 
“ I don’t know anything about it,” she said. I will 
buy him anything that he wants that is good for him ; 
but oh, dear, what a mess he is in ! Your lines are not 
straight, and you are all over paint. Jan, come away 
from that painted boy.” 

“ Oh, mozer, let me stay !” cried J anet, possessing 
herself of a stray brush. 

It was perhaps those black brows of theirs that gave 
them such an air of determination. Carry did not 
feel herself able to cope with the two little creatures 
who looked at her with their father’s eyes. She bad to 
yield oftener than was good for them or than she felt 
to be becoming. She took her usual expedient of hur- 
rying in to her husband to consult him as to what it was 
best to do. He was in his library, and she had no doubt 
he was hard at work. It was generally with some little 
difficulty and after some delay that on ordinary occa- 
sions he had to be gently beguiled into his own sacred 
room after luncheon ; but he had gone to-day at once 
with an alacrity which made Carry sure he had some 


77 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 
new ideas to put down, and her heart was light and 
full of satisfaction. He was seated at his table, leaning 
over it, so busy that he did not hear the door open, and 
she paused there for a moment, happiness expanding 
her breast, and a smile of tender pleasure on her face. 
She would not interrupt him when he was busy with 
any trivial matter of hers. She stood and watched him 
with the purest satisfaction. Then she stole in quietly, 
not to interrupt him, only to look over his shoulder, to 
give him, perhaps, a kiss of thanks for being so busy. 
Poor Carry ! what she found when she approached was 
that Beaufort’s head was bent, with every appearance of 
profound interest, over an emblazoned book, from which 
he was drawing on a larger scale, upon a big sheet of 
paper, the Beaufort arms. She breathed forth an ‘‘ Oh !” 
of sickening disappointment, and he turned his head. 

Is it you. Carry ? Look here, I have got a new 
toy.” 

“ So I perceive,” she said. It was all she could do to 
keep the tears from showing in her eyes, but he would 
not have seen them, having turned back to his work 
again. 

“ A moral purpose is a feeble thing,” he said, over his 
compasses and pencils. “ I began it as a lesson to Tom, 
to take him down a bit, but I find it quite interesting 
enough on its own account. Look here. We are going 
to rig you up a flag, as Tom says, like the queen.” 

Poor Carry ! How her tender heart went up and 
down like a shuttlecock, as she stood with her hand on 


78 


LADY CAB: 


the back of his chair, her eyes full of bitter tears of 
disappointment. The thought that it was out of interest 
in Tom and love for her that this futile occupation had 
been taken up melted her altogether. How could she 
allow, even in her own mind, a shadow of blame to rest 
on one so tender and so good ? She laid her hand upon 
his shoulder and patted it softly, like the mother of a 
foolish, delightful child. 

^‘Dear Edward, I almost grudge that you should 
think of so many things for me,” she said. 

“ My dear, it was not primarily for you, but as a les- 
son to Tom,” he said, fixing the leg of his compasses 
firmly in the paper. “You must take him to — his 
place, as he calls it. Carry. But I confess that for the 
moment I had forgotten my object. To give a moral 
lesson is a fine thing, but it’s nothing to the invention 
of a new toy.” 


« 


TEE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


79 


CHAPTER VII. 

The flag, so casually suggested, became in effect a 
very favorite toy, both with Beaufort and his stepson. 
The one was a very ordinary little boy, the other a 
highly cultivated man. But they seemed to take equal 
pleasure in the flutter of the flag from the blue-and- 
white staff which Tom had painted with so much 
trouble, and in rushing out to pull it down when Lady 
Car, in her little pony carriage, drove from the door. 
They sometimes tumbled over each other in their haste 
and zeal to perform this office. And Beau’s legs were 
so much the longer, they gave him a great and scarcely 
just advantage over Tom. 

Carry was pleased; she was touched and flattered, 
and such vanity as she had was so delicately ministered 
to that for some time this little folly, which took the 
air of homage to her, made her feel happy. To see the 
grave and gentle philosopher, with a long, swift stride, 
almost stepping over the children to get at the cord and 
pull up the fluttering flag, a brilliant piece of color 
among the bare trees, as she appeared with her ponies 
in the little avenue! It was a little absurd, but so 
sweet. Edward did it, she allowed herself to imagine, 
as he hard said, for a lesson to Tom — to teach him thus 


80 


LADY CAD: 


broadly, though symbolically, the honor that was due 
to his mother; not to Carry individually, who never 
claimed homage, but to the mother whose claims, per- 
haps, the boy was not suflSciently conscious of. This 
was not at all the lesson which Beaufort had intended 
to teach Tom, but what did that matter? It had a cer- 
tain effect in that way, though none in the way that 
Beaufort intended. It did give Tom an impression of 
the importance of his mother. Mother’s not just a 
woman like the rest,” he said to Janet. She is what 
you may call a great lady, Jan, don’t you know ? There’s 
Mrs. Howard and that sort ; you don’t run up flags for 
them. Mother’s really something like the queen — it’s 
in earnest. Beau thinks so. I can tell you he’s awful- 
ly proud of mother ; and so am I, too.” 

“ Oh, Tom, so am I.” 

“Yes, but you’re just natural. You don’t under- 
stand. But me and Beau know why we do it,” said 
Tom. And when he got back to school, if he did not 
boast so much of his place in Scotland, having acquired 
an uneasy sort of doubt of its magniflcence, he inti- 
mated that his parentage was not like that of the oth- 
ers. “ When my people drive from the door the flag 
goes down,” he said. “It’s such fun rushing and get- 
ting hold of the rope and up with a tug, as soon as they 
come into the avenue. Sometimes, when it’s been rain- 
ing, the rope won’t run. It’s such fun,” cried Tom, 
while even Harrison major’s mouth was closed. The 
flag was beyond him. As for Janet, she looked on 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


81 


staring, and observed everything and drew many silent 
conclusions never perhaps to be revealed. 

But when the holidays were over, Carry’s anxious ex- 
pectations and suspense increased again. Beaufort kept 
to his new toy, even when Tom was gone. He would 
interrupt his studies, springing up, whatever he was do- 
ing, to pull down or put up that flag, till poor Carry’s 
heart grew sick of the little formula which accompa- 
nied all her movements. She began to feel that he liked 
to be disturbed, and that idling forth into the air to 
perform this little ceremony was more delightful to 
him than to get on with that work which, so far as she 
could make out, was not yet begun. He had found 
more note-books after Tom went away, but the note- 
books now began to pall a little. And slowly, slowly. 
Carry’s eyes began to open. She never whispered it to 
herself, but she began to understand, as the years went 
on, many things that were never put into words. She 
became flrst of all very sick of the note-books and the 
wonderful number of them, and all those tantalizing 
scraps which never came to anything. Her own little 
poem which she had begun had gone no further. The 
dawning of genius — but the dawn was still going on. 
It had never come to be day yet. Would it ever come? 
Slowly, reluctantly, this began to be revealed to her, 
broken by many gleams of better hope, by moments 
when she said to herself that she was the most unjust 
woman in the world, grudging her husband the leisure 
in which alone great thoughts can develop — grudging 
6 


82 


LADY CAE: 


him the very quiet which it had been the desire of her 
heart to attain for him. The most unjust of women ! 
not his wife and assistant, but his judge, and so hard a 
one ! It was bitter-sweet to Carry to be able thus to 
condemn herself, but it did not change the position of 
affairs. 

One evening they were seated together in a happy 
mood. It was summer, and it was some years after the 
incidents above described. Carry by this time knew 
almost everything about Beaufort, and what he could 
not or would not do. And yet her expectations were 
not quenched. For it is hard to obliterate hope in a 
woman ; and now and then at intervals there would 
still spring up little impulses in him, and for a few days 
she would forget (yet all the same never forget) her 
dolorous discoveries and certainties. It was after one 
of those elans, when he had displayed every appearance 
of being at work for several days, and Lady Car’s heart, 
despite of a thousand experiences, had risen again, that 
in the evening, in a very sweet summer twilight, they 
sat together and watched the stars coming out over the 
tops of the waving trees. Janet, now grown almost to 
her full height — she was never very tall — had been 
wandering about, flitting among the flowers in her white 
frock, not unlike (at a distance) one of the great white 
lilies which stood about in all the borders. It was early 
in July, the time when these flowers are at their sweet- 
est. The air was full of their delicate fragrance, yet 
not too full ; for there was a little warm breeze which 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE 


83 


blew it over the whole country, away to the heather and 
gorse on the Haslemere side, and brought back faint 
echoes of wilder scents, the breath of the earth and of 
the moors. Janet had been roaming about, never with- 
out a glance through the branches at the two figures on 
the lawn. She was like one of the lilies at a distance, 
tall for fourteen, though not tall for a full-grown wom- 
an, and slim, too, in the angularity of her age, though 
of a square, solid construction which contradicted all 
poetical symbols. She had always an eye upon them 
wherever she went. Nothing had changed her specta- 
tor attitude, not even the development of many tender 
and loyal feelings altogether unknown to the outer 
world. So far as appeared outside, Janet was still the 
same steady little champion of her brother that she had 
been from her baby days, and not much more. The 
pair who were seated on the lawn were, as always, con- 
scioi^s of the girl’s presence, which was a certain re- 
straint upon their freedom. There was not between 
them all the same ease that generally exists in a family. 
Though she was quite out of hearing, they did not even 
talk with perfect freedom. When she had gone to bed, 
called by the all-authoritative nurse of whom even her 
mistress was a little afraid, Beaufort drew a long breath. 
He had a sort of habitual tenderness for Janet as a 
child who had grown up under his eyes and was one 
of the accessories of daily life. But yet he was more 
at his ease when she was gone. “ How dark it is get- 
ting!” he said; ‘‘the light comes from the lilies, not 


84 


LADY CAB: 


c 


from the sky, and Janet’s white frock, now she has 
gone, has taken a little away.” 

“My poor little Janet!” said Lady Car. “I wish I 
could think she would be one of those who give 
light.” 

“ Like her mother. It is a pity they are so little like 
you. Carry. Both the same type, and that so much in- 
ferior. But children are very perverse in their resem- 
blances as much as in other things.” 

“Nobody can say Janet is perverse,” said Lady Car, 
with that parental feeling which, though not enthusias- 
tic itself, can bear no remark upon the children who are 
its very own ; and then she went back to a more inter- 
esting subject. “ Edward, in that chapter you have 
just begun — ” 

“My dearest, let us throw all the chapters to the 
winds. In this calm and sweetness what do we want 
with those wretched little philosophical pretences ? The 
world, as far as we can see it, seems all at peace.” 

“ But there is trouble in it, Edward, all the same, 
trouble to be set right.” 

“ Not much, so far as we can see. There is nothing 
very far wrong in our little town ; every ‘ poor person,’ 
as you ladies call them, has half a dozen soft philan- 
thropists after him to set him right; and we don’t 
even see the town. Look at all those dim lines of 
country, Carry. What a breadth in them, and no harm 
anywhere, the earth almost as soft as the sky ! Don’t 
let us think of anything, but only how sweet it all is. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


85 


I am glad that shrubbery was cut away. I like to see 
over half the world — which is what we are doing — as 
far as eye can carry, it comes to much the same. May 
I light my cigarette 

“Edward,” she' cried, “ it is all quite true. There is 
not much harm just here ; but think how much there 
is in the world, how helpless the poor people are, how 
little, how little they can do. And what does it matter 
that we all try a little in the way of charity ? Right 
principles are the only things that can set us all right. 
I have heard you say a hundred times — in the old 
days — ” 

“ You have heard me say a great deal of nonsense in 
the old days.” 

“Was it all nonsense,” cried Lady Car, “all that was 
said and thought then ? There seemed so many splen- 
did things we could do : set up a standard of higher 
justice, show a better way both to the poor and the 
rich, and — and other things. I love the landscape and 
the sweet evening, Edward, oh, so much ! and to sit and 
look at them with you, and to feel all the peace around 
us, and the quiet, and that there is no reason why we 
should not be happy; but better than that I should 
love to see you lift up that standard, and show the bet- 
ter way, you who can do it, you who understand all the 
problems. That is what I wish, that is what I have al- 
ways wished — above all, above all!” she cried, clasping 
her hands. The enthusiasm of her sensitive nature 
overwhelmed Carry. She could not contain herself any 


86 






LADY GAIt: 

longer. “I would rather even not have been happy 
and seen you great and doing great work,” she said. 

He stretched out his hand and took hers, which he 
held and caressed softly. My dear little enthusiast !” 
he said. 

Don’t say that, Edward !” she cried, quickly ; that 
was all very well in the old days, which you say were 
nonsense. I was only a girl then, but now I am middle- 
aged and not to be put off in that way. I am not a lit- 
tle enthusiast; I am an anxious woman. You should 
not put me off with phrases of the past.” 

“ You are always a girl. Carry, if you should live to 
be a thousand,” he said, with a faint laugh. ‘^If you 
were so middle-aged as you say, you would be content 
with results as we have them. Here we are, we two, 
together with all the happiness we once so eagerly 
looked forward to, and which seemed for a time hope- 
less — very well off, thanks to you. Able to surround 
ourselves with everything that is delightful and pleas- 
ant, besides the central fact of being together, able to 
help our poor neighbors in a practical way — thanks to 
you again. Not so much as a crumple in our bed of 
roses — not a thorn. My dear, that is what you would 
think of, if you were middle-aged as you say.” 

“ Then let me be a silly girl, as in the old times,” she 
cried, though it was all nonsense, nothing but nonsense, 
as you say.” 

“Softly, softly,” he said, taking her hand again, “let 
us discriminate. Carry. Love can never be nonsense 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 87 

which has lasted like ours. My love, you must not 
blaspheme.” 

‘‘ Love !” she cried. Carry’s whole frame was trem- 
bling, her heart beating to her feet, to her fingers, in 
her throat. She seemed to herself only to be a slim 
sheath, the merest covering for that convulsive heart. 
There was something like — could it be scorn in the in- 
fiection of her voice. He took her by both hands now, 
throwing down the cigarette which had betokened the 
entire ease of his mind, and drew her towards him. 
Something like alarm had come into his tone, and 
something like indignation too. 

“Carry,” he said, holding her hands fast, “Carry, 
what do you mean? Not that my love was nonsense, 
which never wavered from you, notwithstanding every- 
thing — not that you distrust me ?” 

The darkness is an advantage in many an interview 
like this. It prevented him from seeing all that was in 
Lady Car’s face, the impetuous, terrible question, the im- 
pulse of wild scepticism and unbelief, the intolerable im- 
patience of the idealist not to be altogether restrained. 
Her eyes asked what her lips could never say. Why 
did you leave me to be another man’s wife ? Why let 
me be strained, humbled, trodden under foot? Why 
expose me to all the degradations which nobody could 
impose on you — and why ? why ? But Carry said none 
of these things. She could not. There are some things 
which the religion of the heart forbids ever to be put in 
words. She could not say them. He might have read 


88 


LADY GAB: 


them in her eyes, but the darkness kept that revelation 
from him which would have been more startling than 
anything Beaufort had ever encountered in his life. 
Finally Carry, being only a woman and a sensitive and 
delicate one, fell into the universal feminine anti-climax, 
the foolishness of tears. How often does their irre- 
strainable non sequitur put the deepest reasons out of 
court, and turn the most solemn burden of the soul into 
apparent foolishness — a woman’s tears, which often gain 
a foolish cause, but as often lose a strong one, reducing 
the deep-hearted to the level of the shallow, and placing 
the greatest offender in the delightful superior position 
of the man who makes allowances for and pardons! 
Beaufort gathered her into his arms, made her have her 
cry out upon his shoulder, soothed and calmed and ca- 
ressed her out of her passion of feeling. If any one 
could have whispered in his ear what was in the pas- 
sionate heart that throbbed on his shoulder! but he 
would have smiled and would not have believed. She 
was a little enthusiast, still the same young, ethereal 
poet as ever, a creature made up of lovely impulses and 
sympathies and nerve and feelings — his sweet Carry, his 
only love. 

After this evening Lady Carr had a little illness, noth- 
ing of any consequence, a chill taken sitting out too late 
on the lawn, a headache, probably neuralgic — a little ail- 
ment, quite simple, such as ladies often have, keeping 
them in their rooms and dressing-gowns for a day or 
two. A woman scarcely respects herself who has not 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


these little breaks from time to time, just to show of 
what delicate and fragile stuJff she is made. But she 
emerged from her room a little different, no one could 
quite tell how, with a different look in her face, quieter, 
less given to restless fits, more composed and gentle. 
She had always been gentle, with the softest manners in 
the world, so that the change was not apparent to the 
vulgar. Beaufort perceived it for the first day or two, 
and it gave him a faint shock, as of something invisible, 
some sudden mystery between them; but the feeling 
passed over very quickly, with a conviction of the utter 
absurdity of any such impression. Janet, who had nev- 
er any words in which to convey her discoveries, and no 
one to say them to if she had found the words, saw it 
more clearly, and knew that something had happened, 
though what she could not divine. There were some 
faint changes, scarcely perceptible but developing gradu- 
ally, in Lady Oar’s habits too. She was less in the library 
with her husband, abandoning this custom very slowly, 
in the most natural way in the world, compelled by other 
duties which naturally, with a daughter growing up, be- 
came more important every day. 


90 


LADY CAE: 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Lady Car did many things after this period which 
she had previously disliked to do ; but there was one 
thing which she did not for a long time consent to, and 
that was to open the house in the North which was 
called the Towers, which Tom had been used to speak 
of as^^my place,” and which Beaufort thought it foolish 
of her not to inhabit. He did not know the ghosts that 
dwelt there. He did not consider that it was the house 
of her first husband, the house she was taken to as a 
most wretched bride after the marriage into which she 
had been forced, and that the dreadful time of that 
bridehood, and the years she had lived with Torrance, 
and the moment of awful ecstasy when she had heard 
of his death, all lingered there waiting for her. Mr. 
Beaufort only thought it was foolish, when she had a 
handsome house in Scotland at her command, that the 
family did not go there in the autumn, where it was 
natural that families should go. But he was not a man 
to bore her by any repetition of this wonder. He had 
been a little surprised, and even, it must be allowed, a 
little disconcerted, to find himself so much more at his 
own disposal than of old ; and, now that Carry was not 
always at his side, his habits, too, changed imperceptibly. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


91 


His beautiful library was still his chief haunt, but he 
read the papers there and all kinds of profane things. 
And he went a great deal to Codalton, where the county 
club was, and spent a part almost of every day there. 
It was not that he had any great liking for the gentle- 
men who found it such a resource. He kept the posi- 
tion among them of a man who was not as they were — 
a person superior in many ways, a writer (though he 
never wrote anything), a philosopher. No doubt he 
was entitled to that last character. He was very civil 
to them all, but regarded them from an altitude, mak- 
ing notes of what he called their “ humors ” and mak- 
ing them the subject of many satirical descriptions when 
he went home. Sometimes he went up to London for 
the day, at first to consult books, but latterly without 
alleging any such reason, and went to many places 
where there were no books to consult. But it was very 
rarely that he did not return home in the evening. He 
had no desire for dissipations of any kind. He was far 
too much a philosopher, not to say a gentleman. Tom, 
perhaps, described it best in his school-boy language 
when he said that Beau liked to loaf. So he did. He 
had no twist in his character. Had Lady Car followed 
him in all his excursions she would have found nothing 
to object to, and indeed he would have enjoyed them 
much more if she had. But he had, as a matter of fact, 
no mission such as she had credited him with ; he had 
no gospel to preach, nothing at all to say. If there had 
ever been anything more than youthful excitement and 


92 


LADY CAR: 


ambition in his plans, it had all evaporated in his listless 
life. He might have pushed on — many young men do 
— and insisted upon marrying his love, and saved her 
from Tom Torrance and the dreadful episode of her 
first marriage. He might have realized at last some of 
his early promises and anticipations. He might at least 
have roused himself from his sloth, and written that book 
upon which her heart was so set. But, indeed, that last 
was doubtful, for he might only have proved that he 
could not write a book, which would have been harder 
on Lady Car than to think he would not. The end of 
all things was, however, that he was immensely relieved, 
and yet made vaguely miserable by the change that had 
now come over his life. There was a change. The 
sweet and constant, if sometimes a little exacting, com- 
panionship of the early years was over, which gave him 
a vague ache as of desertion, especially at first. And 
Carry was changed. Her questions, her arguments, her 
constant persuasions and inducements to go on with that 
book (expressing always a boundless trust in his powers 
which it pained him to part with) were all over. On 
the other hand, he had regained his liberty, was now 
free to do as he pleased — an indescribable boon. What 
he pleased to do was always quite gentlemanlike, quite 
comme ilfaut There was no reason why he should be 
restrained in doing it. He liked to read and also to 
think, without it being supposed to be necessary that 
anything should come of his reading and thinking. He 
liked to go to his London club now and then and have 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


93 


the stimulus of a little conversation ; he liked, when 
there was nothing else to do, to go into Codalton, and 
talk a little to the country gentlemen and the smaller 
fry about who were suflSciently important to belong to 
the county club, and to come in occasionally to sit with 
his wife in her drawing-room, to read to her, to tempt her 
to talk, even to give Janet a little lecture upon literature, 
which she cared nothing about. He was on those occa- 
sions a delightful companion ; so easy in his superior 
knowledge, so unpretending. In their rich and easy 
life, without cares, without any embarrassment about 
ways and means, or any need to think of to-morrow, he 
was indeed an admirable husband, a most charming 
stepfather, pleasant all round. What could any woman 
have wished for more ? 

There was one period in this easy and delightful life 
which brought the change home to Beaufort with curi- 
ous force for a moment and no more. It was just after 
the publication of a book which went over his ground, 
the ground which it had always been supposed he was 
going to take. It forestalled him on many points, but in 
some went quite against him, contradicting his views. 
He brought in the volume with some excitement to his 
wife, and read to her those portions with which he dis- 
agreed. ‘‘1 must do something about this,” he said; 
“ you see the fellow takes half my argument, and works 
out from it quite a different conclusion. I have been 
too supine. I must really get to work at once, and not 
suffer myself to be forestalled and contradicted like this.” 


94 


LADY CAR: 


“ Yes, Edward,” said Carry, gently. She smiled very 
sweetly upon him, with a curious, tender smile, but she 
did not say any more. 

‘‘You speak as if you did not think it worth my 
while,’’ he said, a little annoyed by her composure. 

“ Oh, no. I think it quite worth your while,” she said. 
He went off a little disturbed, vexed, half angry, half sad, 
but certainly stimulated by her. Was it indifference? 
What was it ? Had she responded as of old they would 
have talked the matter over between them and taken 
away all its interest ; but as she did not respond, Beau- 
fort felt the fire burn. He went off to his room, and 
got out all his preparatory notes and the beginning of 
the long-interrupted manuscript, and worked with vigor 
all night, throwing his opposite views hastily upon paper. 
Next day he announced to his wife that he meant “to 
review that fellow’s book ” — as the quickest and surest 
way of expressing his dissent. “Yes,” she said once 
more, but with a little rising color, “ when, Edward ?” 
“ Oh, I’ll send it to ‘ Bowles,’ ” he said, meaning “ The 
Nineteenth Century ” of that day. Of course, “ The 
Nineteenth Century” itself had not yet begun its dig- 
nified career. And he did an hour’s work that morn- 
ing, but with softened zeal ; and in the afternoon he re- 
peated to himself that it was scarcely worth his while. 
The people who had read that fellow’s book would not 
care to read a review ; they would be people on the 
other side, quite unlikely to pay any attention to the 
opposite argument. And as for the general public, the 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 95 

general public did not care a straw for all the social 
philosophy or political economy in the world. So, after 
another hour’s deliberation he put all the papers back 
again — what was the use? — and went in to the county 
club and brought back a very amusing story of the com- 
plicated metaphors and confused reasoning of some of 
the gentlemen there. It did not strike him that Carry 
never asked whether he had finished the review, or how 
he was going to treat the subject. But he remarked 
her smile with a curious sensation which he could not 
explain. It seemed to him something new — very sweet 
(her smile had always been sweet), very patient, indul- 
gent, with a look of forgiving in it, though he did not 
know very well what there was to forgive. He forgot 
in a short time all about the answer he had intended to 
write to that book, and even the review into which his 
intended answer had so soon slid — in intention ; but he 
was haunted for a very long time by Carry’s smile. 
What did it mean ? 

Tom and Janet were just as little aware why it was 
that their mother was so much more with them than of 
old, but this had come on gradually, and it did not 
strike them except by moments. ‘^Why, you’re al- 
ways with mother now,” Tom said, when he came 
home for his holidays. He was now at Eton, and, 
though he had been in several scrapes, had managed 
to keep his place, and was in high hopes of getting 
into the boats, which was the only distinction he had 
any chance of. 



LADY CAB; 


“YeSj” said Janet, sedately, ‘^for I’m growing up 
now, and mother says I want her most — ” 

‘‘ Isn’t it awful sap ?” said Tom, which was Eton (at 
that time) for boredom and hard work. He had the 
grace to speak low, and Janet gave him a glance up- 
ward with raised eyelids, and they both laughed, but 
softly, that no one might ask why. 

‘‘ She thinks of such a lot of things that no one can 
be expected to know,” said Tom ; “ not that I mind, for 
she lets me alone now. But I suppose you’ve got to 
read books all day ?” 

Oh, no. Oh, Tom, we oughtn’t to talk like this 
and laugh, for she’s — mother’s very kind. She is, in- 
deed. She sees in a moment if I’m tired.” 

“ She’d need to,” said Tom, “ but I don’t suppose 
girls mind. You come out now and have a game. 
Will she let you? If she won’t, just steal away — ” 
‘^Oh, Tom,” cried Janet, again, ^‘how can you speak 
of mother so? She never stops any fun, never— when 
there is any,” the girl added, after a pause. 

Lady Car was at the other end of the room, seated in 
the recess of a broad window which looked over the 
wide landscape. She had been waiting for Janet, who 
had asked her assistance in some work she was doing — 
trumpery work such as disturbed all Carry’s prejudices. 
Janet was painting flowers upon some little three-legged 
stools for a bazaar, and, though she only copied the 
‘^patterns,” she required in the execution some hints 
from her mother, who had once made considerable prog- 
ress in the study of art. Janet was entirely unaware 


c 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 97 

that Lady Car’s dreamy landscapes, which were full of 
distance and suggestion if nothing else, were in any way 
superior to her “ patterns,” and had made her call for 
aid with the frankest confidence that what she was doing 
was excellent art. And Carry had prepared the palette 
from which the dahlias and red geraniums were to be 
painted with as much care as if it had been wanted by 
Kaphael. When she saw the two, after their whispered 
conversation at the door, suddenly disappear, perhaps 
she was not altogether sorry. It is possible that the 
painting of the stools was ^‘sap” to the mother also. 
She smiled at them, with a little wave of her hand and 
shake of her head, as they passed the window, in mild 
allusion to the abandoned work ; but perhaps she was 
as much relieved as Janet was. She laid back her head 
upon the dim-colored satin of her chair, and watched 
the two young creatures with their racquets, Janet car- 
rying in her apron a supply of balls for their game. 
Seventeen and a half, fifteen and a half — in the bloom 
which was half infantile, half grown up, all fresh about 
them, nothing as yet to bring in black care. They were 
not handsome, but Tom had a sturdy manliness and 
strength, and Janet, her mother thought, looked every- 
thing that was simple and trustworthy — a good girl, not 
clever — but very good-natured and kind ; and Tom not 
at all a bad boy — rough a little, but that was mere high 
spirits and boyish exuberance. They were neither of 
them clever. She said to herself, with a faint smile, 
how silly she had been ! 

7 


98 


LADY CAR: 




How she had worshipped talent — no, not talent, gen- 
ius — and had hoped that they would surely have had 
some gleam of it — the two whom she had brought into 
the world. They had been surrounded with beautiful 
things all their lives. When other people read foolish 
nursery stories to their children she had nourished them 
upon the very best — fables and legends which were lit- 
erature as well as story — ^yet Janet liked the patterns 
for her stools better than all the poems and pictures, 
and Tom never opened a book if he could help it. And 
what matter? she said to herself, with that faint smile 
of self-ridicule. The children were none the worse for 
that. Her fantastic expectations, her fantastic disap- 
pointment, what did they matter ? She was altogether 
a most fantastic woman — everybody had said it all her 
life, and she recognized fully the truth of the accusa- 
tion now. Who should be so happy as she ? Her hus- 
band so kind, always with her, thinking of everything 
that would make her happy. Her children so good 
(really so good !), nice, well-conditioned — Tom so man- 
ly, Janet all that a girl should be, very, very different 
indeed from Carry as a girl. But what a good thing 
that was ; Janet would have no silly ideal, would desire 
no god to come from the skies, would not torment her- 
self and every one about her with fantastic aspirations. 
She would love some good, honest young fellow when 
her time came, and would live the common life, the 
common, happy life, as the family at Easton were doing 
now. Edward, gone over to Codalton to the county 


99 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 

club — the natural resource of a man in the country; 
the brother and sister playing tennis on the lawn — the 
boy expecting to get into the boats, the girl delighted 
with a new pattern for her stools. And no cloud any- | 

where, no trouble about settling them in life, no embar- 
rassment about money or anything else. How happy 
a family ! Everything right and pleasant and comfort- 
able. As Carry lay back in her chair, thinking all these 
happinesses over, her eyes ran over with sudden tears — 
for satisfaction surely and joy. 

When the tea-tray came in the young ones appeared ^ 

with it, very hungry, and ready for the good things 
which covered the little table. Lady Car watched them 
consume the cakes with the same smile which had puz- 
zled Beaufort. Would you really like so very much,” 
she said, with a little hesitation, a lingering in her voice, 

“ to go to the — Towers for the next holidays, Tom ?” 

“ Should I like !” cried the boy, jumping up with his J 

mouth full of bread and butter. Why, mother, bet- 
ter than anything in the world !” 

“Oh, mother!” Janet cried, with a glow upon her 
face. She had passed the bread-and-butter stage, and 
was cutting herself a hunk of cake. The knife fell out 
of her hand from excitement and pleasure. 

“ Shall you both like it so very much? Then,” said 
Lady Car, sitting straight up, with a look of pale reso- 
lution in her face which did not seem called for by 
such a simple determination, “then, children, you 
shall go — ” % 


L 


100 LADY CAE: 

Hurrah !” cried Tom, that’s the jolliest thing I’ve 
heard for long ; that’s exactly what I want ! I want to 
know it,” he cried ; “ I do want to know it before I go 
there and settle down.” 

Lady Car turned her eyes upon him with a wondering, 
inquiring look. Nothing, indeed, could be more natu- 
ral. Yet to hear that some one would go there, not for 
holidays, but to settle down, oppressed poor Carry’s 
soul. She faded into whiteness, as if she were faint- 
ing. It seemed to her that his father looked over Tom’s 
shoulder — the father whom the boy was so like= — his 
living image, as people said. Not so tall and strong, 
but with the features and the eyes and the aspect, which 
poor Carry had so feared. 

Beau !” cried both the young people in one voice. 

Oh, I believe it’s his doing, Tom !” “He must have 
a hand in it, Jan!” Beau, next holidays we are going 
to the Towers. Mother says so. We are going next 
holidays to the Towers.” 

“ Your mother is full of sense,” said Beaufort, who 
had just come in. “I knew that she would see it to 
be the right thing to do.” 

Poor Carry ! She felt as if she could not bear it, this 
sacrifice of all her own feelings and wishes. She said 
to herself that she could not do it ; that before the time 
came she must die ! And perhaps there was a forlorn 
hope in her heart that this was what would happen as 
she sat and saw her husband and her children rejoicing 
over the tea-table — most naturally, most justly, she 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


101 


knew ; at least it was but natural and just so far as the 
children were concerned. 

She had to give great orders and make many arrange- 
ments about the opening up of the house. It was so 
long since it had been shut up. Tom had been only 
six, and now he was seventeen and a half. She wrote 
to her sister Edith and to Edith’s husband, John Ers- 
kine, as well as to the factor on the estate and the ser- 
vants who were in charge. And there were a number 
of things sent from town ‘‘ to make it habitable.” To 
make it habitable ! She could not help the feeling that 
this was what he would have liked least of all, when 
she remembered the wonderful, costly catafalques of 
furniture of which he had been so proud, and the deco- 
rations that would make poor Edward miserable. Ed- 
ward did not mind the fact that it was his money which 
made Easton so comfortable ; but to put up with his 
wardrobes and sideboards — that was a difiEerent matter. 
Even in her humiliation and in the much greater 
troubles she had to occupy her, she could not help a 
shudder to think of Edward in the midst of all those 
showy relics of the pa^^t. Eleven years had not dimmed 
her own recollection of her old surroundings. She re- 
membered, with an acute recollection which was pain, 
where everything stood, and sent detailed directions as 
to how all was to be altered. “ Dear Edith, do see that 
everything is changed. Don’t let anything look as it 
used to do. It would kill me if the rooms were left as 
they were,” she wrote to her sister. ‘‘Do — do see that 
everything is changed.” 


102 


LADY CAE: 


Perhaps it was by dint of having thus exhausted all 
feeling and forestalled all emotion, that when she did 
find herself at the Towers at last, it was almost without 
sentiment of any kind. Edith had carried out her con- 
signe very well, and she was standing under the mock 
mediaeval doorway to receive her sister when Lady Car 
drove up. The sisters had not met for a long time — 
not for several years, and the meeting in itself did much 
to break the spell. Carry awoke next morning with 
wonder and a little relief to find herself in her old home, 
and to feel that she did not mind. Torrance did not 
meet her at his own hearth ; he did not look at her from 
the mirror; he did not follow her about the corridor. 
She was very much relieved after all her imaginary an- 
guish to feel that the reality was less dreadful than she 
had feared. 

And it was something to see the children so truly 
happy. The quiet little Janet, who said so little, was 
quite roused out of herself. She became almost noisy, 
rushing with Tom from the top of the tower to the very 
cellars, going over everything. Her voice mingled 
shrill in the hurrah with which Tom contemplated the 
flag of which he had dreamed, the sign of his own domi- 
nation in this house of his fathers, which was to the 
boy as if it had been the shrine of the noblest of races. 

I see now,’’ he said, that rag at Easton was all sham, 
but this is the real thing.” This is the real thing,” 
said Janet, decisively, ‘‘the other was only nonsense.” 
They had not been twenty-four hours in the place be- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


103 


fore they had seen, and, as they said, recognized every- 
thing. All their up-bringing in scenes so different, all 
the associations of their lives, seemed to go for nothing. 
They were intoxicated with pleasure and pride. A 
couple of young princes restored to their kingdom could 
not have accepted their grandeur with a more undoubt- 
ing sense that they had at last recovered their rights. 

The house soon filled with visitors and company, 
guests who came for sport, and guests who came for 
curiosity, and the great county people who were friends 
of the Lindores, and the smaller people who were friends 
of Torrance. And with both sets of these visitors Carry 
could not help seeing — or perhaps she only imagined 
it — that, though her husband and herself were treated 
with great courtesy, it was Tom who was looked to with 
the chief interest. He was the future possessor of all. 
Though she had entire sway in the house, as she never 
had before, yet she was nothing but a shadow, as she 
had always been. And the children in their haste to 
enjoy would have liked, if possible, to ignore her too. 
As for Tom, he got altogether beyond her control. 
When he was not shooting, taking upon himself pre- 
mature airs of the master, he was riding about the coun- 
try as his father had done, going to all kinds of places, 
making acquaintances everywhere. He came home on 
several occasions, after a day of roaming, with wild eyes, 
half falling, half leaping off his horse, making his en- 
trance audible by all the tumult of rough excitement, 
calling loudly to the servants, discharging oaths at them 


104 


LADY CAB: 


for imaginary delay. The first time this happened, Lady 
Car only suspected it with alarm, which everybody 
about stilled as best they could, getting the young cuh 
prit out of the way. The matter ? There is nothing 
the matter Beaufort said, coming to her, a little pale, 
but with a laugh. “ Tom has lost his temper. He is 
vexed with himself for being late for dinner. I’ll have 
a talk with him by and by.” ‘‘Is that all, Edward?” 
she said. “ What should it be more ?” her husband re- 
plied. But on another occasion, as evil luck would have 
it, Tom made his entrance just as the party, a large one, 
in which his place was vacant, was sweeping across the 
hall to dinner, and his mother, who came last, had the 
full advantage of that spectacle. Her son, standing all 
bespattered, unsteady, his dull eyes fierce with angry 
light. “Hallo, mother? I’m a bit late^ Never mind. 
I’ll ccme as I am,” he cried, steadying himself, beating 
his muddy boot with his whip. Lady Car threw an an- 
guished look at the new butler, who stood, splendid and 
indifferent, at the door. There was not even an old 
servant full of resource to coax the foolish, wretched 
boy away. 

She had to go in and sit down, smiling, at the head of 
her table, and entertain her guests, not knowing any 
minute whether the boy might not burst in and make 
his shame visible to all. In the midst of the sounds of 
the dinner-table, the talk, and the ring of the knives 
and forks, and the movements of the servants, other 
sounds seemed to reach her ear of loud voices and noise 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


105 


outside. She had to bear it all and make no sign, but 
talk with what was almost noisiness for Carry, that her 
neighbors on each side might not notice. Perhaps, 
though it seems more horrible at such a crisis to be in 
the midst of the compulsory make-belief of society, it is 
better for the sufferer. She kept up, and never winced 
till the dinner was over, and the endless hour in the 
drawing-room after, and all the guests gone — those who 
were from the neighborhood to their homes, those who 
were in the house to their rooms. Then, and only then, 
did she dare to breathe, to give way to the devouring 
anxiety in her mind. She had bidden her husband 
Go, go !” to the smoking-room, or anywhere with the 
last guests, and she was alone. The whole house had 
been changed ; the old furniture displaced, all its associ- 
ations altered ; and yet in that moment everything came 
back again, the catafalques of old, the vulgar splendor, 
the old dreary surroundings. Her boy ! Her boy ! 
She thought she saw his father come out before her, as 
she had feared to see him all these years, saying, with 
his old brutal laugh, Your boy ! none of yours. Mine ! 
mine !” 


106 


LAJDT CAR: 


CHAPTER IX. 

Beaufort behaved very well at this crisis of domestic 
history. He shook off his usual languor and became at 
once energetic and active. What he said to Tom re- 
mains undisclosed, but he ‘‘ spoke to ” the boy with 
great force, and even eloquence, representing to him 
the ruin entailed by certain bad habits, which — more 
than other vices, probably worse in themselves — destroy 
a man’s reputation and degrade him among his fellows. 
Though he was himself a man over-refined in his ways, 
he was clever enough to seize the only motives which 
were likely to infiuence the ruder nature of his stepson. 
And then he went to poor Carry, who in this home of 
evil memories sat like a ghost surrounded by the recol- 
lections of the past, and seeing forever before her eyes 
the disordered looks and excited eyes of her boy. He 
was not, alas ! the son of her dreams, the child whom 
every mother hopes for, who is to restore the ideal of 
what a man should be. Many disappointments had al- 
ready taught Lady Car that her son had little of the 
ideal in him, and nothing, or next to nothing, of herself; 
but still he was her son ; and to think of him as the 
rude and violent debauchee of the country-side seemed 
more than she could bear. Beaufort came in upon her 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 107 

miserable seclusion like a fresh breeze of comfort and 
hope. This was so far from his usual aspect that the 
effect was doubled. Tender he always was, but to-day 
he was cheerful, hopeful, full of confidence and conscious 
power. “There must be no more of this,” he cried. 
“ Come, Carry, have a little courage. Because the boy 
has been a fool once — or even twice — that is not to say 
that there is anything tragical in it, or that he is aban- 
doned to bad habits. It is probably scarcely his fault 
at all — a combination of circumstances. Nobody’s fault, 
indeed. Some silly man, forgetting he was a boy, per- 
suading him out of supposed hospitality to swallow some- 
thing his young head could not stand. How was the boy 
in his innocence to know that he could not stand it? 
It is a mere accident. My love, you good women are 
often terribly unjust and sweeping in your judgments. 
You must not from one little foolish misdemeanor judge 
Tom.” 

“ Oh, Edward !” she cried, “ judge him ! ray own boy ! 
All that I feel is that I would rather have died than 
seen that look, that dreadful look, in my child’s face.” 

“ Nonsense, Carry. That is what I call judging him. 
You should never have seen it, but as for rather dying — 
Would Tom be the better for it if he lost his mother, 
the best influence a boy can have — ?” 

She shook her head ; but how to tell her husband of 
the spectre who had risen before her in the house that 
was his, claiming the son who was his, his heir and not 
Carry’s, she did not know. Influence 1 she had been 


108 


LADT GAR: 


helpless by the side of the father, and in the depths of 
that dreadful experience Carry foresaw that the son, so 
like him, so moulded upon that man whom she had 
feared to the bottom of her heart, and alas ! unwillingly 
hated, had now escaped her too. There are moments 
which are prophetic, and in which the feeblest vision 
sees clear. He had escaped her influence, if, indeed, he 
had ever acknowledged any influence of hers. As a 
child he had been obliged to obey her, and even as a 
youth the influence of the household — that decent, tran- 
quil, graceful household at Easton — which henceforward 
Tom would compare so contemptuously with his own 
‘‘ place,” and the wealth which was soon to be his — had 
kept him in a fashion of submission. But Tom had al- 
ways looked at his mother with eyes in which deflance 
lurked ; there had never been in them anything of that 
glamour with which some children regard their mother, 
finding in her their first ideal. It had always been a 
weariness to Tom to be confined to the restraint of her 
society. When they were children even, he and his sis- 
ter had schemed together to escape from it. She was 
dimly aware that even Janet — These things are hard for 
a mother to realize, but there are moments when they 
come upon her with all the certainty of fate. Her in- 
fluence ! She could have laughed or wept. As it was 
with the father, so would it be with the son. For that 
moment at least poor Carry’s perceptions were clear. 

But what could she say ? She said nothing ; not even 
to Beaufort could she disclose that miserable insight 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


109 


which had come to her. Your own children, how can 
you blame them to another, even if that other is your 
husband ? how say that, though so near in blood and 
every tie, they are alien in soul ? how disclose that sad 
intuition? Carry never said a word. She shook her 
head ; not even, perhaps, to their own father could she 
have revealed that discovery. A mother’s part is to ex- 
cuse, to pardon, to bear with everything, even to pretend 
that she is deceived and blinded by the partiality of 
love, never to disclose the profound and unutterable 
discouragement with which she has recognized the truth. 
She shook her head at Beaufort’s arguments, leaving 
him to believe that it was only a woman’s natural sever- 
ity of judgment against the sins with which she had no 
sympathy. And by and by she allowed herself to be 
comforted. He thought that he had brought her back 
to good sense and the moderation of a less-exacting 
standard, and had convinced her that a boyish escapade, 
however blamable, was not of the importance she imag- 
ined. He thought he had persuaded her not to be hard 
upon Tom, not to reproach him, to pass it over as a 
thing which might be trusted to his good sense not to 
occur again. Carry did not enter into any explanations. 
She had by this time come to understand well enough 
that she must not expect any one to divine what was in 
her heart. 

Meanwhile Janet, who was vaguely informed on the 
matter, and knew that Tom was in disgrace, though not 
very clearly why, threw herself into his defence with 


no 


LADY CAR: 


all the fervor that was in her nature. She went and 
sat by him, while he lingered over a late breakfast with 
all the ruefulness of headache. “ Oh, Tom, what have 
you done she said. ‘‘ Oh, why didn’t you come in time 
for dinner ? Oh, where were you all the afternoon ? We 
were looking for you everywhere, Jock and I.” Jock 
was an Erskine cousin, the eldest of the tribe. 

“ What does it matter to you where I was ?” said the 
sullen boy. 

‘^Tom! everything about you matters to me,” said 
Janet, “and for one thing we couldn’t make up our 
game.” 

“ Oh, that humbugging game. Do you think I’m a 
baby or a girl? I hate your tennis. It isn’t a game 
for a man.” 

“Quantities and quantities of gentlemen play. Beau 
plays. Why, the officers play,” cried Janet, feeling that 
nothing more was to be said. 

Tom could not refuse to acknowledge such authority. 
“Well, then, it isn’t a game for me, playing with girls 
and children. A gallop across country, that’s what I 
like, and to see all father’s old friends, and to hear what 
they thought of him. By Jove, Janet, father was a man ! 
not one to lounge about in a drawing-room like old 
Beau;” here the boy’s heart misgave him a little. 
“ Beau’s kind enough,” he said ; “ he doesn’t look at a 
fellow as if — as if you had murdered somebody. But 
if father had lived — ” 

“I wonder — ” Janet said, but she did not go any 


TEE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


111 


further. Her light eyes, wondering under her black 
brows, were round with a question which something pre- 
vented her from putting. The possibility of her father 
having lived confused all her thoughts. She had an in- 
stinctive sense of the difficulties conveyed in that sug- 
gestion. She changed the subject by saying, unadvisedly, 
‘‘ How bad you look, Tom ! Were you ill last night 

He pushed her away with a vigorous arm. “ Shut 
up — you !” he cried. 

“You are always telling me to shut up; but I know 
you were to have taken in Miss Ogilvie to dinner — that 
pretty Miss Ogilvie — and when you did not come, it put 
them all out. I heard Hampshire telling nurse. He 
said something about ^your boozing Mr. Tom,’ and 
nurse fired up. But afterwards she cried — and mother 
has been crying this morning; and then you look so 
bad. Do tell me if you were ill, Tom.” 

He did not reply for some time, and then he burst 
out, “ Mother’s such a bore with her crying ? Does she 
think I’m to be a baby all my life ?” 

“Do you know,” said Janet, “you’re very much like 
that portrait of father in the hall — the great big one 
with the horse ? Mother looks frightened when she 
passes it. He does look a little fierce, as if he would 
have scolded dreadfully,” the girl added, with the air of 
making an admission. 

“ I would rather have been scolded by him,” cried the 
boy. “No, he wouldn’t have scolded, he would have 
known better. A man like that understands fellows. 


1 


112 LADY CAB: 

Jan, weVe rather badly off, you and me, with only a 
woman to look after us, and that Beau.’’ 

Do you call mother a woman ? You might be more 
civil,” said Janet; but she did not contradict this asser- 
tion, which was not made for the first time. She, too, 
had always thought that the ideal father, the vague im- 
personation of kindness and understanding, who would 
never mock like Beau, nor look too grave like mother, 
was something to sigh for, in whose guard all would 
have gone well. But the portrait in the hall had daunt- 
ed Janet. She had felt that those black brows could 
frown and those staring eyes burn beyond anything 
that her softly nurtured childhood had known. She 
would not betray herself by a word or even a thought 
if she could help it, but it could not be denied that her 
heart sank. I wish,” she said, quickly, “ you’d leave off 
breakfasting, Tom, and come out with me for a walk. 
What is the good of pretending? One can see you 
don’t want anything to eat.” 

Walk !” said Tom. “ You can get that little sap to 
walk with you. I’ve got to meet a fellow — Blackmore’s 
his name — away on the other side of the moor at twelve. 
Just ring the bell, Jan. In five minutes I must have 
Bess at the door.” 

It’s twelve o’clock now. Don’t go to-day. Besides, 
mother — ” 

“ What has mother to do with it ?” cried Tom, start- 
ing up. I’m going, if it was only to spite mother, 
and you can tell her so. Do you think I’m tied to 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


113 


mother’s apron string? Oh, is it you, Beau? I — am 
going out for a ride.” 

‘‘ So am I,” said Beaufort, entering. I thought it 
likely that would be your intention, so I ordered your 
horse when I ordered mine. Where did you say you 
were going? I caught somebody’s name as I came in.” 

He said he was — a friend of my father’s,” said Tom, 
sullenly. 

‘‘ Ah ! it is easy for a man to say he is the friend of 
another who cannot contradict liim. Anyhow, we can 
ride together so far. What’s the matter ? Aren’t you 
ready ?” Beaufort said. 

‘‘ He has not finished his breakfast,” said Janet, spring- 
ing to Tom’s defence. * 

Oh, nonsense ! at twelve o’clock ?” said Beaufort, 
with a laugh. And presently, notwithstanding the 
youth’s reluctance, he was carried off in triumph. Janet, 
much marvelling, followed them to the door to see them 
mount. She stood upon the steps, following their move- 
ments with her eyes, dimly comprehending, divining, 
with her feminine instincts half awakened. Tom’s sul- 
len, reluctant look was more than ever like the portrait, 
which Janet paused once more to look at as she went 
back through the hall. She stood looking for a long 
time at the heavy, lowering face. It was a fine portrait, 
which Torrance had boasted of in his time, the money 
it had cost filling him with ill-concealed pride. It was 
the first thing which had shaken Janet in her devotion 
to the imaginary father who had been the god of her 
8 


114 


LADY GAB: 


childhood. Tom was not so big ; he was not tall at all, 
not more than middle height, though broadly and heavi- 
ly made. It was very like Tom, and yet there was 
something in it which made the girl afraid. As she 
stood gazing with more and more uncertainty upon the 
pictured face. Lady Car came quickly into the hall — al- 
most running — in evident anxiety and concern. She 
stopped suddenly, as Janet turned round, casting a half- 
frightened, shuddering look from the picture to the girl 
before it. There was something like an apology in her 
nervous pause. 

‘‘ I — thought Tom was here,’’ she said. 

He has gone out riding — with Beau.” 

‘‘With Beau?” Lady Car breathed something that 
sounded like “ Thank God !” 

“ Is there anything wrong — with Tom ?” said Janet, 
gazing round upon her mother with defiance in her 
eyes. 

“Wrong? I hope not. They say not. Oh, God 
forbid !” Lady Car put her hands together. She was 
very pale, with a little redness under her eyes. 

“ Then, mother, if there’s nothing wrong, why do you 
look like that ?” 

“Like that?” Lady Car attempted a little laugh. 
“ Like what, my dear ?” She added, with a long-drawn 
breath, “ It is my foolish anxiety ; everybody says it is 
foolish. It \b> plus forte que moiP 

“I wish you would not speak French,” said Janet. 
“Tom is well enough, though he doesn’t look well. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


115 


He ate no breakfast, and he looked as if he would like 
to take my head off. Isn’t Tom — very like father?” 
she added, in a low voice. 

They were standing at the foot of the picture, a full- 
length, which overbore them as much in reality as 
imagination, and made the woman and the girl look like 
pigmies at his feet. Carry gave a slight shiver in spite 
of herself. 

“Yes,” she said, faintly ; “and, my dear — so are you 
too.” 

Janet met her mother’s look with a stolid steadiness. 
She saw, half sorry, half pleased. Lady Car’s eyes turn 
from the picture to her own face and back again. She 
had very little understanding of her mother, but a great 
deal of curiosity. She thought to herself that most 
mothers were pleased with such a resemblance — so at 
least Janet had read in books. She supposed her own 
mother did not care for it — perhaps disliked it because 
she had married again. 

“You never told us anything about father,” she said, 
“ but nurse does a great deal. She told me how he — 
was killed. Was that the horse?” 

“ Yes,” said Lady Car, with a trembling which she 
could not conceal. 

“ Is it because you are sorry that you are so nervous ?” 
said Janet, with those dull, light eyes fixed upon her, 
which were Torrance’s eyes. 

“ Janet !” cried her mother, “ do not ask me about it.” 
She said, in a low, hurried voice, “ Is it not enough that 




116 


LADY CAB: 


it was the most terrible thing that ever happened ? I 
cannot go back upon it.” 

‘‘ But afterwards,” said the girl, impelled by she knew 
not what — some influence of vague exasperation, which 
was half opposition to her mother, and half disappoint- 
ment to And the dead father, the tutelary divinity of 
this house to which she had been eager to come, so dif- 
ferent from her expectations — afterwards — you mar- 
ried Beau.” 

Janet !” Lady Car cried again, but this time the 
shock brought back her dignity and self-control. ‘‘I 
don’t know what has got possession of you, my dear, to- 
day. You forget yourself — and me. You are not the 
judge of my actions, nor will I justify myself before 
you.” She added, after a time, Both Tom and you 
are very like your father. After a while he will be 
master here, and you, perhaps, mistress till he marries. 
Your father — might have been living now ” (poor Carry 
grew pale and shuddered even while she pointed her 
moral) — if he had not been such a hard rider, so — so 
careless, thinking he could go anywhere. Do you won- 
der that I am anxious about Tom? You will have to 
learn to do what you can to restrain him, to keep him 
from those wild rides, to keep him — ” Lady Car’s voice 
faltered, the tears came to her eyes. “ I believe it is 
common,” she said, that a young man, such as he is 
growing to be, should not mind his mother much. 
Sometimes, people tell me, they mind their sisters 
more.” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


117 


“ Tom does not mind me a bit,” said Janet, “ oh, not 
a bit — and he will never marry. He does not like 
girls.” 

“ Perhaps he will change his mind,” said Carry, with 
a faint smile. ‘‘ Boys often do. Will yon remember 
what I have said, dear, if you should ever be mistress 
here ?” 

But how can I be mistress ? Where will you be ? 
Why should there be any change ?” 

The house is Tom’s, not mine. And I shall be at 
my own house at Easton — if I am living.” 

Oh !” said Janet. Carry, though a little roused in 
her own defence, almost quailed before the look in the 
girl’s eyes. “ You will be happier then,” she said, with 
the air of an assailant hurling a stone at his victim ; “ for 
you will be all by yourself — with Beau.” 

Go up-stairs, Janet ; I can have no more of this !” 

“ I will not,” she cried ; you said it was Tom’s 
house, not yours. He would not let me be sent away 
out of his hall, from father’s picture, for — any one — if 
he were here.” 

Carry raised her eyes and saw him standing behind 
his child. There seemed a dull smile of triumph in 
his painted eyes. ‘‘ You thought they were yours — but 
they are mine,” Torrance seemed to say. Both of 
them ! their father’s in every nerve and fibre — nothing 
to do with her. 


118 


LADY CAE: 


CHAPTER X. 

Apart from these painful struggles with her children, 
which were quite new to Lady Car, there were many 
things that pained her in her residence at the Towers. 

First of all there was her nearest neighbor, her dear- 
est friend, her only sister Edith ; the dearest companion 
of her life, who had stood by her in all her troubles, and 
to whom she had given a trembling support in her 
struggle, more successful than poor Carry’s, against the 
husband her father had chosen for her. Edith had suc- 
ceeded at last in marrying her only love, which was a 
poor marriage for an earl’s daughter. They had, in- 
deed, finally, both of them, made poor marriages ; but 
what a contrast between them ! Carry living ignobly 
with the husband of her choice upon Torrance’s money, 
the result of her humiliation ; while Edith was at the 
head of a happy, frugal family, carefully ordered, with 
little margin for show or pleasure, but yet in all the 
plenitude of cheerful life, without a recollection to 
rankle, or any discord or complication in all her candid 
existence. Her father had not been able to force the 
will of Edith. She had not loved her John any better 
than poor Carry had loved, in her early, tender youth, 
the lover of all her dreams, the Edward Beaufort who 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


119 


was now her husband ; but Carry had not been able to 
resist the other husband, the horrible life. Even in 
that Edith had so much, so much the advantage over 
her sister! And then — oh, wonder to think of it! — 
John — John, from whom nothing had been expected, 
except that he should show himself, as he had always 
done, the good fellow, the honest gentleman, the true 
friend he was — whether by development of his own re- 
spectable mind or by the influence of Edith (though 
she was never clever like Carry), or by the united force of 
both — John had long been one of the most important 
men in the district, member for his county, trusted and 
looked up to both by his constituency at home and the 
people at headquarters, who took his advice, it was said, 
on Scotch affairs more than any one’s; whereas Ed- 
ward — Carry had long made that poignant comparison 
in her heart, but to see them together now bowed her to 
the ground with a secret humiliation which she could 
never acknowledge — not to her sister, who also in the old 
days had put so much faith in Beaufort’s genius ; not to 
Edward himself — oh, no, to humiliate him. He did not 
seem to feel the contrast at all himself, or, if he did per- 
ceive it, he thought it apparently to be to his own advan- 
tage, speaking now and then of the narrowness of practical 
men, of the deadening influence of politics, and of how 
completely John Erskine’s interest was limited to mat- 
ters of local expediency and questions before Parliament. 
‘‘And he used to have his share of intelligence,” said, 
all unconscious, the useless man, whose failure his wife 


120 


LADT CAR: 


felt so passionately. Then, as if this were not enough, 
there was Jock, little Jock, who was younger than Janet, 
only fourteen, but already at Eton like Tom, and hold- 
ing a place above that of the seventeen-year-old big lower 
boy. The reader must understand that this history is 
not of to-day, and that in those times big lower boys 
were still possible, though it is so no longer. Tom was 
only a lower boy, and little Jock might have fagged his 
cousin, had it not been that Jock was in college on the 
foundation, saving the money which was not too plen- 
tiful at Dalrulzian. “A tug!” Torn had cried, with 
contempt intensified by the sense of something in his 
mother’s eyes, the comparison which made her heart 
sick. Little J ock at fourteen, so far above the boy who 
was almost a man ; J ohn Erskine, in his solid good sense, 
so much more important a man than Edward with his 
genius manque. It went to Carry’s heart. 

It is difficult to feel that sense of humiliation, that 
overwhelming consciousness of the superiority of an- 
other family, however closely connected, to our very 
own, without a little grudge against the happy, the 
worthy, the fortunate. Carry loved her sister tenderly, 
and Edith’s happiness was dear to her ; but the sight of 
that happiness before her eyes was more than the less- 
fortunate sister could bear. She could not look upon 
Edith’s bright boy, with his candid countenance, with- 
out thinking with a deeper pang of Tom’s lowering 
brows, and that horrible look of intoxication which she 
had seen in his face ; nor could she see her brother-in- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


121 


law busy and cheerful with his public work, his table 
piled with letters, blue books, all the paraphernalia of 
business, without thinking of Beaufort’s dilettante ease, 
his dislike of being appealed to, his “ Oh, I know noth- 
ing of business !” Why did he know nothing of busi- 
ness ; why was he idle, always idle, good for nothing, 
while others — oh, with not half his powers ! — were work- 
ing for the country ? It was still Carry’s desperate be- 
lief that no one had half his powers — yet sometimes she 
said to herself that, had he been stupid as some were, 
she could have borne it, but that it was the waste of 
these higher qualities which she could not bear. Even 
this little refuge of fancy was taken from her on the 
occasion of a meeting about some county movement, to 
which her husband was called as the guardian of young 
Tom, and where he had to make a speech much against 
his will. His speech was foolish, tedious, and ignorant — 
how indeed should he know about the affairs of a Scotch 
county? — while John Erskine held the matter and the 
attention of the hearers in his hand. “ I thought Lady 
Car’s new husband had been a very clever man,” she 
heard, or fancied she heard, some one say as the people 
dispersed. Perhaps she only fancied she heard it, caught 
it in a look. And how they applauded John Erskine, 
who did so well ! — oh, she knew he did well, the master 
of his subject and of the people’s sympathies ; whereas 
what information could poor Edward have, what com- 
mon interest with all these people? Poor Edward! 
Carry’s heart contracted with an ineffable pang to 
think she could have called him so. 


123 


LADY GAB: 


She loved Edith all the same — oh, yes! how could 
she fail to love her only sister, the person most near to 
her in all the world? But yet she shrank from seeing 
Edith, and felt at the sound of her happy voice as if she. 
Carry, must fly and hide herself in some dark and un- 
known place, and could not bear the contact of the other, 
who had the best of everything, and in whose path all was 
bright. To sympathize with one’s neighbor’s blessed- 
ness, when all that makes her happy is reversed in one’s 
own lot, is hard, the hardest of all the exercises of 
charity. Carry said to herself that she was glad and 
tha^nkful that all was so well with Edith ; but to hide 
her own face, to turn to the wall, not to be the witness 
of it, was the best thing to do. To look on at all, with 
the aching consciousness of failure on her own part, and 
smile over her own trouble at Edith’s happiness, was 
more than she was able to do ; yet this was what she 
did day after day. And she read in Edith’s eyes that 
happy woman’s opinion of Tom, her verdict upon Beau- 
fort, and her disappointment in Janet. Though Edith 
said nothing. Carry knew all that she could have said, 
and even heard, over intervening miles and through 
stone walls, how her sister breathed with a sigh her 
melancholy name. Poor Carry! Her heart fainted 
within her to realize everything, yet she did it, and cov- 
ered her face and covered her ears not to hear and see 
that pity, which she could neither have heard nor seen 
by any exercise of ordinary faculties. But the mind by 
other means both sees and hears. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


123 


“Edward,” she said to her husband suddenly one 
day, “ we must leave this place. I cannot bear it any 
more !” 

He turned round upon her with a look of astonish- 
ment. “Leave this place! But why, my love?” he 
said. His surprise was quite genuine. He had not, 
then, during the whole of her martyrdom, acquired the 
faintest insight into her mind. 

“ There is no reason,” she said, hastily, “ only that I 
cannot — I cannot bear it any more.” 

“ But is not that a little unreasonable. Carry ? Why 
should you go away ? It is only the middle of Septem- 
ber. Tom does not go back to school for ten days at 
least — and after that — ” 

“ Edward, I hate the place. You knew that I hated 
the place.” 

“ Yes, my love ; and felt that it was not quite like my 
Carry to hate any place, especially the place which must 
be her son’s home. 

“ I never wanted to come,” she said, “ and now that 
we have proved — how inexpedient it was — ” 

“ Don’t say so, dear. I have told you my opinion 
already. The best women are unjust to boys in these 
respects. I don’t blame you. Your point of view is 
so different. On the contrary, we should have brought 
Tom here long ago. He ought to have learned as a 
child that there were men calling themselves his father’s 
friends who were not fit company for him. I think he 
has learned that lesson now, and to force him away from 


124 


LADY GAR: 


a place he is fond of, as if to show him that you could 
not trust him — ’’ 

It is not for Tom,” she said. “ Edward, cannot you 
understand? it is for myself.” 

“You are not the sort of woman to think of yourself 
when Tom’s interests are at stake. We ought to stay 
even after he is gone, to make all the friends we can for 
him. For my own part, I like the place very well,” 
Beaufort said. “ And then there is your sister so near 
at hand. You must try to forget the little accident that 
has disgusted you. Carry. Think of the pleasure of hav- 
ing Edith so near at hand, and that excellent fellow, 
John — though he’s too much of an M. P.” 

It was with purpose that Beaufort laughed, with that 
gentle and friendly ridicule of his brother-in-law, to 
carry her thoughts away from the accident — from 
Tom’s escapade, which he thought was the foundation 
of Carry’s trouble. And what could she say more? 
She did not, could not, tell him that Tom’s look had 
reminded her of another, and that Torrance himself, 
standing in full length in the hall, claiming its sov- 
ereignty, master of all that was within, kept the mis- 
eries of her past life and her unsatisfied heart too ter- 
ribly before her. Of that she could say nothing to her 
husband, nor of Janet’s rebellion, nor above all of what 
was intolerable in Edith’s gentle society, the sense of 
her superior happiness, her pity for poor Carry ! He 
might have divined what it was that made the house 
intolerable to her ; but if he did not, how could she say 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


125 


it? Thus Lady Car gradually achieved the power of 
living on, of smiling upon all who surrounded her with 
something in her eyes which nobody comprehended, but 
which some few people were vaguely aware of, though 
they comprehended it not. 

Poor Carry !” Lady Edith said, in the very tone 
which Lady Car heard in her heart ; but it was said in 
John Erskine’s library at Dalrulzian, with the windows 
closed, five miles away. 

Why poor Carry ?” asked her husband ; “ if you 
were to ask her, she would say she was a happy woman, 
happy beyond anything she could have hoped. When 
I think of her with that brute Torrance — where is she 
now, but in such different circumstances.” 

‘‘Oh, John, the circumstances are different; Edward 
is very nice, but — ” 

“ But what ?” 

“Carry is not like you and me,” said Edith, shaking 
her head. 

“No; perhaps so much the better for us. She is 
fanciful and poetical and nervous, not easy to satisfy ; 
but the comparison — must be like heaven after hell.” 

Edith continued to shake her head, but said no more. 
What was there to say ? She could not, perhaps, have 
put it into words had she tried, and how get John to 
understand it? — a man immersed in public business, 
fearing that soon he should need a private secretary, 
which was an expense quite unjustified by his means. 
She patted him on the shoulder as she stood behind his 


126 


LADY CAB: 


chair, and said, “Poor John ! have you all these letters 
to answer?” 

“Every one,” he said, with a laugh. “You are in a 
compassionate humor to-day. Suppose you answer a 
few of them for me, instead of saying ‘ Poor John !’ ” 

This was so easy. If she had not been so busy with 
the children she was the best of private secretaries. 
Alas ! there was nothing to be done for poor Carry in 
the same simple way. Nor in any way, Edith reflected, 
as she sat down at her husband’s table ; a sympathetic 
sister must not even venture to show that she was com- 
passionate. She must conceal the consciousness of his 
father’s look in Tom Torrance’s face, and of the fact 
that Beaufort’s book had never been written, and that 
his name was altogether unknown to the world save as 
that of Lady Caroline Torrance’s second husband. “ Oh, 
poor Carry !” Edith said again. But this time only in 
the depths of her own heart, not to John. 

The only other person who saw the change in Lady 
Car’s look was Janet, who had defied her mother. The 
girl was in high rebellion still. She spent her life as 
much as she could with Tom, seconding powerfully, with- 
out being aware of it, fhe w^atchful supervision of Beau- 
fort, who, if he had failed her in so many respects, was 
anxiously and zealously acting for Lady Car in her son’s 
interests. Janet seized upon her brother on every oc- 
casion when it was possible. She managed to ride with 
him, to walk with him, to occupy his attention as no- 
body else could have done. It is true that Tom had no 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


127 


delicacy on the subject of Janet, and sent her away with 
a push of his elbow when she bored him, without the 
least hesitation ; but in her vehemence and passion she 
did not bore him for the short period of his holidays 
which remained. She had told him of her rebellion, 
with a thrill of excitement which shook her from head 
to foot. The crisis was the greatest that had ever hap- 
pened in her life. She could not forget it, not a word 
that had passed, nor a look. Tom had contemplated 
her with an admiration mingled with alarm when he 
first heard the tale of her exploit. ‘^You cheeked 
mother !” He had scarcely done more himself, though 
he was a man and the master of all ; and Janet was only 
a little girl, of no account at all. But her fervor, her 
passion, seized hold upon him, and as it occupied her- 
self in the overwhelming way with which a family con- 
flict occupies the mind, Janet became to Tom as the 
sharer of an exciting secret. They watched their mother’s 
looks and every word she said in the light of that en- 
counter. Neither of them was capable of believing that 
it had passed from Lady Car’s mind, while still they dwelt 
upon it, making it the theme of long conversations. “ I 
say, do you think she’ll say anything to me?” Tom asked, 
with some anxiety. 

“ I don’t know ; but if she does you’ll stand by me, 
won’t you, Tom ?” 

“Oh, I say!” Tom replied. “Beau would make a 
fuss if I said anything to mother. He has a way of 
speaking that makes you feel small somehow.” 


128 


LADY CAB: 


“Small? You? When you are the master? Why, 
mother said so, though she was so cross.” 

“ Oh, yes, of course I’m the master,” said Tom. “ But 
you should hear Beau when he gets on about a gentle- 
man, don’t you know? What’s a gentleman? A man 
that has a place of his own and lots of money, and no 
need to do anything unless he likes — if that’s not a gen- 
tleman, I don’t know what is.” 

“And does Beau say — something different?” Janet 
asked, with a little awe. 

“ Oh, all kinds of nonsense ; that it’s not what you 
have, but what you do, and all that. Never take a good 
glass — well, that’s what Blackmore, father’s friend, calls 
it — a good glass — nor say a rude word — and all that 
sort of thing. By Jove ! Jan, if it’s all true they say, 
father was a jolly fellow, and no mistake.” 

“ Do you mean that he did — that ?” 

Tom gave vent to a large laugh. “ Did — what ? Oh, 
I can’t tell you all he did. He rode like anything ; flew 
over every fence and every ditch that nobody else would 
take, and enjoyed himself. That’s what he did — till he 
married, which spoils all a man’s fun.” 

“ Oh, Tom !” 

“Well, it does — you have to give up — ever so many 
things and live like an old woman. I sha’n’t marry, I 
can tell you, Jan, not for years.” 

“Then I shall stop with you, Tom, and keep the 
house.” 

“ Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Tom ; “ I shall 




THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 129 

have too many fellows coming and going to do with a 
girl about the place.” 

“ But you must have some one to keep house. Mother 
said so ! She is not going to have me at Easton — that 
I am sure of ; and if I am not to keep house for you, 
Tom, what shall I do?” said Janet, with symptoms of 
coming tears. 

Then Tom did what the men of a family generally 
do when a foolish sister relies upon them. He promptly 
threw her over. ‘‘ You should not have cheeked mother,” 
he said. 

9 


130 


LADY CAE: 


CHAPTER XL 

Next day the brother and sister went out riding 
by themselves. The game had been but poorly pre- 
served during Lady Car’s sway, and had not been of 
great importance at any time, so that Tom’s time was 
by no means absorbed by the shooting to be had, and 
Janet had begged for one long ride with him before he 
went back to school. It was a bright September after- 
noon, the air crisp with an autumnal chill, enough to make 
the somewhat sluggish blood thrill in the veins of the 
boy and girl, who were so like each other and had a cer- 
tain attachment to each other — more strong, as was nat- 
ural, on Janet’s side than on Tom’s. Lady Car had come 
out to the door to see them ride away. “ Take care of 
Janet,” she had said. Beaufort’s warning look, and her 
own consciousness, very different from that of Beaufort, 
that what she said would not bear the least weight, pre- 
vented her from saying more. But perhaps she looked 
more, as she followed them with anxious eyes. “ Don’t, 
Carry,” her husband said, as he drew her into the house 
— don’t show any distrust of the boy.” 

“ Distrust ?” she said. “ I don’t think he cares what 
I show.” 

‘‘My love! don’f think so badly of the children.” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


131 


Oh, no ; I don’t think badly of them. They are so 
young, they don’t know; but it is true all the same. 
They don’t mind how I look, Edward ; which must be 
my blame and not theirs,” she added, with a faint smile ; 
“how should it be theirs? It is only part of the fail- 
ure. Some people make no impression on — any one. 
They are ineffective, like what you say of a wall-paper 
or a piece of furniture.” 

“These are strange things to say,” said Beaufort, 
gravely. 

“ Silly things,” said Lady Car. “ If you are not busy, 
let us take a stroll about the gardens. I have not been 
out to-day.” 

She knew he was not busy, and she had given over 
even wishing him to be so. Desire grows faint with long 
deception and disappointment ; but he was always kind 
— ready to stroll in the gardens or anything she pleased. 

“ What did mother think I was going to do with you ? 
Take you round by the Bed Scaur and break your neck ?” 
Tom said to Janet. 

“ Oh !” cried Janet to Tom, with wide-open eyes ; 
then added, in a low tone, “ that was where father was 
killed. I have never been there.” 

“ And I’m not going to take you there. It’s all shut 
up ever since. But I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Jan. 
We’ll have a long spin — as far as Blackmore’s farm.” 

“ Blackmore’s farm ? That is the place — ” 

He gave a loud laugh. 

“Well, and what then? A thing may happen once 


132 


LADY CAB: 


and not again. They were tremendous friends of fa- 
ther’s. I don’t mean friends like — like the Erskines 
and so forth. Blackmore’s not a gentleman, but he’s a 
rattling good fellow. And you should just see his 
stables. There’s one hunter I’d buy in a minute if I 
had my liberty. It’s ten miles, or perhaps a little more. 
Perhaps you’re not up to that.” . 

“ Oh, yes, I’m quite up to it. But I wonder if we 
should go — it gets dark so soon — and perhaps mother — ” 
Oh, bother mother !” cried the boy. “We can’t at 
our age be always stopping to consider what an old lady 
thinks.” 

“ Mother’s not an old lady, Tom.” 

“ She’s a great deal older than we are, or she couldn’t 
be our mother. Come, Jan, are you game for a long 
spin ? It’s almost the last time these holidays. Hurrah, 
then, off we go !” And off they went in a wild career, 
Janet following, breathless, gasping, her dark hair flying 
behind her, her hat often in danger, wherever he led. 
She would not allow that she had any fear ; but it was 
a long ride, and the way was confused by the cross-cuts 
which Tom knew only imperfectly, and which made it 
longer, besides leading them over moors and across flelds 
which excited their horses and kept the young riders at 
a full strain, to which Janet’s immature powers were 
quite unaccustomed. She was dreadfully dishevelled 
and shaken to pieces upon their arrival at the large, 
rough establishment to which her brother had already 
paid many visits, and where they were received by a 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


133 


chorus of innumerable dogs and lounging men whose 
appearance was very alarming to Janet. They looked 
like keepers, she thought, or grooms, not like people 
who would naturally be greeted as friends, which was 
what Tom was doing, shaking hands with the big and 
bearded master of the house and the younger man, pre- 
sumably his son, and calling out salutations, in as good 
an imitation of the broad country dialect as he could 
accomplish, to the others. Janet was aware that her 
own aspect was very wild, and she was very tired ; but 
she clung to her saddle when that big gamekeeper ap- 
proached with a mixture of pride and shame. “ So this 
is your sister, Maister Tom ? Charlie, cry on your moth- 
er,” cried the man ; ‘‘ the mistress will be here in a mo- 
ment, missie. Let me lift ye down.” 

No, no,” Janet said, we can’t wait long. We 
must soon go back ; it will be dark. Oh, Tom, we must 
get back.” 

“Nonsense, Jan ! Now I’ve got here I mean to stay 
awhile. And Blackmore’s awfully jolly ; he’ll take you 
through the stables. Come, jump down.” 

“Cry upon your mother, Charlie,” said Blackmore 
again. “ The young leddy thinks we’re a’ men-folk 
here, and she’s frichtened. But ye must not be fricht- 
ened, my boimie doo. Hey, Marget, where’s the mis- 
tress ? And the powney’s a’ in a lather. Pit your hand 
upon my shoulder if you’ll no let me lift ye down.” 

When Janet saw a woman appear at the door, hurry- 
ing out in a cap and a white apron, she allowed herself 


134 


LADT CAE: 


to be lifted from her horse, feeling all the time as if 
she had fallen into some strange adventures such as 
were described in books, not anything that would hap- 
pen to girls like herself in common life. She did not 
know that she might not be detained, locked up some- 
where, forced to sign something, or to come under some 
fatal obligation, as happened to the heroines of some 
old-fashioned novels which she had found in the library 
at the Towers. The mist of fatigue and alarm in her 
eyes made her even more confused than it was natural 
she should be in so new and unexpected a scene. And 
the rough and dingy house, the clamor of the dogs, the 
heavy steps of the man who followed her in, the sense 
of her own dishevelled and disorderly condition and of 
the distance from home, quite overcame poor Janet. 
“ Oh, Tom, let us go home,” she cried, in an agony of 
compunction and fear. 

“Is it Miss Torrance from the Towers? Dear me, 
but it’s a long ride for her — over-long — and a wild road. 
But you must rest a little, now you’re here, and I’ll get 
you a cup of tea,” said the woman of the house. She 
was a fresh-colored, buxom woman, not at all like a 
brigand’s housekeeper, and she smiled upon Janet with 
encouraging, kindly looks. “ I’m real glad to see your 
sister, Maister Tom but you’re a thoughtless laddie 
to bring her so far, and her not accustomed to rough 
riding. Marget, is the kettle boiling ? — for the young 
leddy must have some tea.” 

“ And you can bring in the hot water, and a’ the rest 


135 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 

of it,” said Blackmore, “ for us that are no so fond of 
tea — eh, Maister Tom ? After your ride a good glass 
will do ye nae harm.” 

Janet sat still and gazed while these hospitable prep- 
arations were going on. The large table was covered 
with oilcloth, not unconscious of stains. And the men 
gathered round one side upon which a tray with “the 
hot water” and a black bottle and a strange array of 
glasses, big and little, had been placed. This seemed 
the first thing thought of in the house ; for Marget, 
the big servant- woman (everything was big),. brought 
the tray, pushing open the door with it as she bore it 
in in front of her, before the order had been given. 
And presently the fumes of the hot “ toddy ” filled the 
room, pungent and strong, making Janet feel faint and 
sick. The men fiung themselves into chairs or stood 
about, filling the other end of the room — a small, rough, 
dark crowd, with Tom in the midst. They were all 
very “ kind ” to Tono, patting him on the shoulder, ad- 
dressing him by name, filling his glass for him, while 
Janet, alone at the end of the table, looked on alarmed. 
The mistress was bringing out from a cupboard cups 
and saucers, a basin of sugar, and other preparations for 
tea. 

“ It would do the little miss far more good to taste a 
glass o’ my brew, and put some color into her cheeks,” 
said the master of the house. 

“ Haud your tongue, good man, and leave the young 
lady to me. Tak’ you care what you’re about. You’ll 


136 


LADT CAR: 


get both yoursel’ and other folk into trouble if you 
dinna pay attention.” 

Toots ! a glass will harm naebody,” Blackmore 
said. 

“ I want my sister to see that mare,” said Tom — 

‘‘ that mare, you know, Blackmore, that you said you’d 
keep for me. I want her to see the stables. I told her 
all about you, and that you were tremendous friends — ” 

‘‘ Ah, laddie !” said Blackmore, ‘‘ the sight of you 
brings many a thing back. Many and many’s the time 
that your father — ” 

“ I told her so,” said Tom, with his glass in his hand.'*^ 
“ Here’s to all of you. And I mean to stick to father’s 
friends.” 

Tom !” cried Janet, with a start. The smell of the 
whiskey, the crowd of men, the loud voices and sound 
of their feet upon the floor, scarcely deadened by the 
thin carpet, scared her altogether. “ Oh, Tom,” she 
said, I’m too tired to see anything. Let us get home 
— oh, let us get home !” and, overcome by excitement 
and confusion, Janet began to cry. 

My bonnie dawtie,” said the mistress, “ wait till ye 
get your tea.” 

‘^Oh, let us get home,” cried Janet; ‘‘ it will soon be 
dark. I’m frightened to ride after it is dark. All those 
dreadful roads ! Oh, Tom, let us get home — oh, Tom, 
let us get home !” 

‘‘ Maister Tom,” said the mistress, it’s true she says. 
It’s not fit for a bit thing like her to be gallopin’ a’ 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


137 


those uncivilized roads in the dark. Charlie shall put 
in one of the horses in the dog-cart and drive her hame.’’ 

That will I,” said Charlie, rising with a great deal 
of noise. He was the best-looking of the young men, 
and he put down his steaming glass with alacrity. “ I’ll 
put in Spanker, and she’ll gang like the wind.” 

“ Te’ll have to be very canny with her, for she’s 
awfu’ fresh,” said another of the men. 

‘‘ Don’t be a fool, Jan,” cried the boy ; she’ll ride 
home fast enough. And I’m not going to have it ; do 
you hear, Charlie ? What's the good of making a fuss ? 
I’m not going to have it,” he cried, stamping his foot. 
“ Do you want to get me into a row ? Why, I as good 
as gave my word — ” 

He stopped short, and they all paused. Janet, too, 
hastily choking the sob in her throat, gazed at him with 
a startled look. 

Maybe it was never to come back here that ye gave 
your word, Mr. Tom ?” said Blackmore, rising up ; ‘‘I 
would guess that by the looks of ye. Well, ye’ll keep 
your word, my young man ; at least, ye’ll as near keep 
it as is possible now. Charlie, out with the cairt, man ! 
what are ye waiting for ? and take the young lady 
hame. It was nane of her own will, that’s clear, that 
brought her here. Ye can say that ; if it was his fault, 
it’s clear that it was nane of hers. Ye had better take 
him on behint, and we’ll send the horses back the 
morn.” 

“ By Jove,” shouted Tom, ‘^I’ll not be taken on be- 


138 


LADY GAB: 


hind ! I’ll ride my own horse, or I’ll not stir a step — 
and catch me ever coming out with her again,” he cried, 
with an oath which made the heart which was beating 
so wildly in Janet’s breast drop down, down to her 
shoes. But when she found herself in the dog-cart by 
Charlie Blackmore’s side, wrapped up warm and flying 
like the wind, behind Madam Spanker, who was so fresh, 
Janet’s sensations turned into a consciousness of hien- 
Ure which was very novel and very sweet. She had 
been persuaded to take the cup of tea. She had even 
eaten a bit of scone with fresh butter and marmalade, 
which was very good. A warm shawl was wrapped 
round her shoulders ; and the delicious sensation of re- 
pose and warmth over her tired limbs, while yet sweep- 
ing at so great a pace over the country, with the wind 
in her face and the long, darkling roads flying past, was 
delightful to Janet. The sound of Tom’s horse’s hoofs 
galloping, now behind, now in advance, added to the 
sense of supreme comfort and pleasure. She had been 
so tired, and the prospect of riding back had been so 
terrible. She felt as if flying through the air, which 
caressed her cheek, as, warmly tucked in by Charlie 
Blackmore’s side, she was carried home. Charlie was 
very ‘‘kind” — almost unnecessarily kind. He spoke 
loud in her ear, with intonations at which Janet won- 
dered vaguely, finding them very pleasant. He told her 
a great many things about himself, how he had never 
intended to stay at home “ among the beasts how 
he had been a session at college and meant to go back 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


139 


again ; how he had once hoped to be something very 
much better than a horse-couper like his father, and how 
to-day all his ambition had come back. Swept along so 
lightly, so smoothly, with such ease, with such warmth 
and comfort, almost leaning against Charlie Blackmore’s 
strong shoulder, with his voice in her ear and the sweet- 
ness of the wind in her face, Janet felt herself held in a 
delightful trance almost like sleep, yet which was not 
sleep, or how could she have felt the pleasure that was 
in it ? It was only when the drive was almost over, and 
the mare made a whirl into the avenue, scarcely to be 
held in till the gates were opened, and flying, after that 
momentary, enforced pause, like an arrow under the dark 
waving of the trees, that her heart suddenly sprang up 
with a sickening throb at the thought of what mother 
would say. Janet had been in a sort of paradise. She 
came down now in a moment to all the anguishes of 
earth. She broke in upon something Charlie Black- 
more was saying, with the utmost inattention and incon- 
sequence. ‘‘ Can you hear Tom she said. “ Oh, 
where is he ? Tom, Tom 

“He is just behint us; don’t be frightened. He is 
all safe,” said Charlie, casting a glance behind. 

The mare made a start at this moment, and, straining 
at the curb, bounded on again. Some one had come out 
upon the road almost under her nose — a dark figure, 
which just eluded the wheel, and from which came a 
voice almost echoing Janet’s, 

“Is that Tom?” 


140 


LADY CAB: 


“ Oh, it’s me, Beau,” cried Janet, wildly, “and Tom’s 
behind.” She was carried on so quickly that half the 
words were lost. 

“Was that your stepfather? They will be anxious 
about ye. I would say ” — Charlie made a little pause to 
secure her attention — “I would say you were passing 
near our place, never thinking ye had come so far, and 
that my mother came out to ye, seeing ye so tired, and 
bid me to bring you hame in the cairt — that’s what I 
would say.” 

“ Say !” cried Janet, fully roused up. “ Do you mean 
that I should tell mother that ? But it would be a lie.” 

“’Deed, and so it would,” said the young man, with a 
shamefaced laugh. “ But to make an excuse for your- 
self is aye pardonable, do ye no think? And then it 
would save Mr. Tom. Be you sure, now my father 
knows he’s given his word against it, he shall never be 
asked into our house more.” 

“ Oh,” said Janet, “ I could not say anything I had 
made up. When the moment comes, and mother looks 
at me, I can only say — what has happened.” 

“ But nothing has happened,” said Charlie. “ Except,” 
lie added, “ one thing, that I’ll maybe tell you about some 
day. But that has happened to me, and not to you. Miss 
Janet, J^ou’ll not forget me clean altogether?” 

“ Oh, how should I forget you,” cried Janet with a 
sob, “ when I know I shall get into such dreadful trouble 
as I never was in before in all my life ! Oh, mother !” 

The girl had thrown off her wraps and tumbled down 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


141 


from the dog-cart, almost before it had stopped, into the 
middle of the group on the steps, which consisted of 
Lady Car, wrapped in a great shawl, her sister, and half 
the servants in the house. 

‘‘Janet ! Oh, where have you been ? And where is 
Tom ? What has happened ? — tell me,” cried Lady Car, 
taking her daughter by the arms and gazing into her eyes 
with an agonized question. The arrival of the cart at 
such headlong speed seemed to give a sort of certainty ' 
to all the fears that had been taking shape among the 
watchers. 

“ Oh, Mozer !” Janet cried, her childish outcry com- 
ing back in the extremity of her apprehension and con- 
sciousness. But Charlie Blackmore, with his wits about 
him, called out from the cart, “ There’s nothing wrong. 
Mr. Tom he’s just behind. They’ve ridden owre far and 
wearied theinselves. Mr. Tom he’s just behind. But 
my mare’s fresh — she’ll no stand. Let go her head, 
dash ye ! Do ye hear ? She’ll no stand.” 

The little incident of the mare whirling round, the 
gravel flying under her feet, the groom recoiling back- 
wards, turning an unintentional summersault upon the 
grass, made a pause in which everybody took breath. 

“ Thank God !” cried Lady Car, “ if that’s all. Is 
that all ? You are not concealing anything, dear?” 

Janet stood in the hall when she had managed to 
twist out of her mother’s hold. Her eyes had a wild 
sparkle in them, dazzled from the night ; her hair was 
hanging dank about her shoulders, her hat tied on 


142 


LADY CAR: 


with Mr. Blackmore’s handkerchief. She looked dazed, 
speechless, guilty, with fear in her face and in her soul. 
She looked as if she might be — have had the habit of 
being — struck and beaten, standing trembling before 
her mother, who had never harmed a fly in all her gen- 
tle life. 

“Mother, we went too far; and then the — woman 
came out — the — the lady, and said I was too tired. He 
was to drive me home.” 

“Well! and that was all? God be thanked there 
has been no accident 1 But where is Tom ?” 

“Mr. Tom is just coming up the avenue, my lady,” 
said one of the men. 

“ Then all is right, and there was really nothing to 
be afraid of,” said Lady Car, with an agitated laugh. 

Was Janet to be let off so easily? She stood watch- 
ing her mother, with uneasy alarm, while all attention 
was diverted to Tom, who jumped off his horse in a 
similar pale suspicion and fear, but with brows more 
lowering and eyes half shadowed by the eyelids. Tom 
had made up his mind as he came along what he was 
to do. He did not wait for the outburst of scolding 
which he expected. “ It wasn’t my fault,” he said, 
with a gleam of his shadowed eyes to where Beaufort 
was coming in behind him. “ She had made up her 
mind she would see the mare, and I had to take her. I 
knew it was too far.” 

Janet stood aghast, with her mouth open, taking in 
every word. A cry of protest rose up in her breast. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


143 


which she had just comprehension enough to stifle. 
“ Never mind just now, my boy,” said Beaufort; ‘‘all’s 
well that ends well ; but you have given your mother 
a great fright. You can tell me after how it was.” 

“ I’d better tell you at once,” Tom repeated. “ She had 
set her heart on seeing the mare. There was no harm, 
I suppose, in telling her about the mare. And I thought 
she was more game than she is. That’s all about it. I 
thought we could have gone into the stables without 
seeing — the people you made me promise about. Beau. 
But I couldn’t help it when I saw how tired she was. 
And Charlie drove her home — that’s all.” 

The cry of protest in Janet’s throat did not get utter- 
ance, but it produced a gasp of horror and astonishment 
as she stood staring in her mother’s face. She could 
not look at Tom. Lady Car was looking at him unsus- 
pectingly, with her faint smile — that smile which Janet 
felt meant something more than any one thought. And 
there was no more said. 


144 


LADY CAB: 


CHAPTER XIL 

Janet went upon no more expeditions with Tom. 
His lie struck her like a shot, going through all her 
defences. She had almost lied for him, according to 
Charlie Blackmore’s instructions ; lied, or at least sup- 
pressed the truth, giving her mother to understand that 
there was no purpose at all in their ride, but only that 
they had gone too far — to save him, that he might not 
be blamed. But when Tom arrived with his lie all 
ready, in which there was no hesitation, Janet, standing 
aghast, looking on, too much startled to contradict him 
or say a word, felt as if he had suddenly landed a blow 
at her — flung an arrow, like the savages she had read 
of, which went through and through, cutting not only to 
her heart, but to the last refuge of her intelligence, the 
recesses of her not too lively brain. It was not only 
pain, but a painful desire to understand, which moved 
her. Why did he do it ? What did he mean by it ? 
It seemed almost impossible to bdlieve that it was only 
the familiar childish effort to clear himself by blaming 
her, It’s Janet — it’s not me.” She had said herself 
in the nursery days, It’s not me — it’s Tom,” in the 
sudden shock of a fault found out. Was that all he 
meant, or was it something more ? Tom’s explanation 
afterwards did not mend matters. 


THE SEQUEL O'F A LIFE, 


145 


Well !” lie said, “ it was you — you know you want- 
ed to see the mare. I told you you weren’t game for it, 
but you swore you were. And whose fault was it but 
yours for breaking down and letting it all out ? — spoil- 
ing my fun in every way. For the Blackmores are as 
proud as the devil — ” 

Don’t speak like that,” cried Janet, with a shudder. 

They are though, just as proud as the devil, though 
they’re nothing but horse-coupers. I knew I was done 
for when I said that I had given my word. The old 
man fired up like a rocket, and I’ll never be able to go 
there any more, which is all your fault.” 

But, Tom, if you gave your word — ” 

“ Don’t be silly,” cried Tom, that’s not like giving 
your honor between you and another man. What’s 
Beau ?” he’s like one of the masters in school. They 
know you don’t mean it ; they know you’ll get out of it 
if you can, and they’re ^Iways on the watch. Not the 
least like another fellow of your own sort that you give 
your honor to. Of course I should keep that. But 
mother or Beau is quite different. You’re forced to do 
that, and they know you never mean to keep it all the 
time.” 

This reasoning silenced Janet, though it did not con- 
vince her. She did not know what reply to make. A 
boy’s code of honor was a thing she did not under- 
stand, and she had always been accustomed to serious 
discrepancies between his ideas of what was meant by 
a promise and her own. Their training had been the 
10 


146 


LADY CAB: 


same, but Janet had always dumbly in the depths of her 
mind put a different meaning to words from that which 
Tom adopted. It was possible that his point of view 
might be right — for him — about giving one’s word to a 
master or to Beau ; but her mind returned to the ques- 
tion that concerned herself with a keener sentiment. 

“I don’t know about that,” she said; ‘^but you 
needn’t, surely, have said it was me.” 

“Why, I did it — ^to please you!” cried Tom. “I 
thought you’d rather. They can’t do anything to you. 
And you never promised. And they can do a deal to 
me,” said the boy, reflectively. “ They can stop all my 
fun — or nearly. They’ve got all my money, and what- 
ever I say it does matter. People will take Beau’s word 
sooner than mine. But they can do nothing to you, a 
girl at home. Mother would never put you on bread 
and water, or shut you up in your room, or that sort of 
thing. You’ll have a jaw, and^that will be all. Now, 
they would never let me off with a jaw. I thought 
you’d be the first to say I should put it upon you, Jan.” 

Once more Janet was silenced. She felt vaguely 
that to take it upon herself and to have the blame 
thrown upon her by another were two different things ; 
but at the same time she felt the imputation of not 
having put herself in the breach at once to defend her 
brother. She had done so to her own consciousness, 
falteringly putting forth Charlie Blackmore’s flb. But 
Tom did not know that, and he thought her ungener- 
ous, wanting to vindicate herself, not ready to screen 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


147 


him, so that she was silenced on all sides of the ques- 
tion, and could not make any stand. But in her heart 
Janet still felt the startling pang with which she heard 
him make his excuse. No doubt there had been al- 
ready similar crises in her life, but she was no longer 
in the nursery age. This made her less anxious for liis 
company during the rest of his stay before he went 
back to school, though Janet was stanch to his side 
and refused to breathe a word to his disadvantage, even 
during the serious jaw” which she received. Lady 
Car’s “jaw,” however, was very mild. She put her 
arm around the passively resisting girl and talked to 
her of what was a woman’s duty. “ A sister is such a 
thing for a boy,” she said. “ Often when he will not 
listen to anybody with authority he will listen to his 
sister, if, instead of going with him on wild expedi- 
tions, she tries to persuade him the other way — rather 
to go with her.” 

Janet listened with a great sense of wrong in her 
heart, but she restrained everything that would harm 
Tom. All that she said was, 

“We went out merely for a ride, mother. We did 
not mean to go anywhere.” 

“I am willing to believe that, Janet,” said Lady Car. 
And there the incident ended, but not the effects of it. 
Nothing more followed, indeed, till Tom had gone, but 
the next day after that, Janet, going to her cousin’s at 
Dalrulzian, where she was allowed to ride alone upon 
the old pony, suddenly came upon Charlie Blackmore 


148 


LADY CAE: 


walking along the road. She recognized him, with a 
leap of her heart. Oh, would he stop and talk ? Oh, 
what would he say to her and she to him ? It was 
with terror, yet with a thrill of pleasure as well, that 
Janet saw him start, as if he had suddenly seen her, 
and stand still until she came up. He meant to keep 
up the acquaintance, it was clear. 

‘‘ Miss Torrance, I scarcely hoped I would have had 
this chance. It seemed ower good to be true.” 

“ Oh, yes, it is me,” said Janet, embarrassed. 

“ You need not tell me that ; I saw it was you as far 
off as een could carry,” said Charlie, forgetting his dra- 
matic start. I hope you are quite well ; but I need 
not ask, for you’re blooming like any rose.” 

Janet felt herself grow red in reply to this compli- 
ment. She knew that she was usually pale and did 
not bloom like the rose, but it was kind of him to say 
so. She had a consciousness that in books girls had 
generally things like this said to them, and she was not 
ill-pleased. 

“I hope,” said Charlie, ‘^all passed off well. Miss 
Janet, yon night.” 

Oh, yes,” said Janet, “ quite well.” 

“ Mr. Tom never came back to bid us good-bye ; and 
’deed it was better not, for there’s always a rabble of 
loose fellows about a stable-yard, and he was just as 
well away. Young lads at his age are better to keep 
out of mischief — as long as they can.” 

Tom has gone back to school,” said Janet, demurely. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


149 


“ Dod !” cried Charlie, it’s a droll thing to hear of a 
lad going back to school that’s man-grown like Mr. Tom. 
I had the care of all the beasts on my hands at his age ; 
but he’ll be going in for Parliament and that kind o’ 
thing, and much learning, no doubt.’’ 

‘‘Oh, no,” said Janet; “he says it’s too much sap. 
He would like to be with the horses best.” 

“And are you fond of horses, too. Miss Janet?’’ said 
Blackmore, with an ingratiating tone. “We’ve got a 
bonnie wee beast yonder that would just do for you. 
If Mr. Tom were the master himsel’ I would ask his 
leave to send it over to let you try it. It’s a bonnie 
little thing, just fit for your riding. But I daur not 
take such a liberty,” said Charlie, “ while the auld folk 
are there.” 

“ My mother is not old,” said Janet, with some indig- 
nation. 

“ISfa; not her ladyship; but there’s more than her. 
I would like to let you see that little beastie. Miss Janet. 
Some day, if I should be this way with her, would you 
mount and try? You’re too good a rider for an old 
brute like that.” 

“ Oh, mother would not be pleased,” cried Janet, 
alarmed. 

“It would do her ladyship no harm, for she need 
never know. I’ll take my chance if you will but say 
ye would like to see her.” 

“ Oh — ” said Janet. But some one just then appeared 
on the road, and Blackmore took off his hat and hurried 


150 


LADY CAB: 


away. The girl was much disturbed by this encounter, 
but there was something in the little mystery of it that 
pleased her. She went on to Dalrulzian with her heart 
beating a little, thinking that Mr. Charlie was very 
kind. He was a man much older than Tom — almost 
twice as old ; and he was a handsome fellow in his vel- 
vet coat, with a blue tie which was very becoming, and 
blue eyes which seemed to say a great many things 
which confused Janet. Next day she went out for a 
little along that quiet road, with a faint expectation, 
wondering if perhaps — it might be possible? and lo, 
there was Charlie on horseback, leading the most charm- 
ing pony. He jumped ofiE his horse when he saw her, 
and, fastening it to a tree, showed her all the beauties 
of the other. “What ails ye to jump on,” he said, 
“and ni take ye for a ride, not far, nothing to tire 
you ?” 

“ Oh, I am not so easily tired,” said Janet, her eyes 
lighting up, “ but I have no habit — and then mother — ” 

“ Her ladyship will be none the wiser,” said Charlie, 
“ and she knows I would take good care of you. She 
would never mind.” 

“ Do you think so ?” said the girl. And in a mo- 
ment — it seemed but a moment — she was pacing along 
by the side of the big horse, every movement of which 
was restrained to harmony with her pony’s smaller 
paces. Janet had been Tom’s victim to follow at his 
pace, to do what he pleased. She had never before 
known the delight of being cared for, considered as the 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


151 


first object. She rode for an hour by Blackmore’s side, 
excited, delighted, half persuaded that she was a fairy 
princess, with everything that was beautiful and pleas- 
ant made for her use. 

This happened again and again, and nobody found it 
out. It was thought at the Towers that she had taken 
to wandering in the woods in her loneliness, now that 
Tom had gone away, and though Lady Car remarked a 
changing color, and that Janet’s eyes sometimes were 
bright and sometimes dreamy, yet nothing like sus- 
picion of any secret ever crossed her mind. No such 
thing entered the mind of any one. And already the 
household was full of preparations for going away, 
which absorbed everybody. The first of October was 
the last day before the departure of the family from the 
Towers, and Janet stole out, unobserved as usual, for her 
last ride. Never had the pony carried her so lightly; 
never had the little escapade been so delightful ; they 
came back slowly, side by side, lingering, unwilling to 
acknowledge that it was over. ‘‘ I’ll keep the pony for 
you. Miss Janet,” said Blackmore. ^‘Nobody shall 
touch her but myself. She shall be kept like a lady, 
like the bonnie lady she belongs to, till you come 
back.” 

“ Oh, but Mr. Charlie,” cried Janet, you must not 
do that. They would not let me buy her, and I’ll have 
no money of my own for a long time — not for five 
years.” 

“Money!” he cried; “did you suppose I was think- 


153 


LADY CAB: 


ing of money? Ye do me great injustice, Miss Janet 
— but it’s no fault of yours.” 

“ Oh,” she cried, it was because you said she was 
mine. Now, she cannot be mine unless I buy her — and 
I cannot buy her. Oh, what have I said wrong? I did 
not mean to say anything wrong.” 

That I’m sure of,” said Charlie, “ and maybe you’re 
too young to understand that the pony’s yours and her 
master’s yours, and not a penny wanted — but something 
else.” 

Janet was greatly bewildered by the look in his eyes. 
She glanced at him, then turned her eyes away. She 
could not think what had happened. He was not angry. 
He looked quite kind ; almost more kind than ever. 
But she could not look at him any more (she said to her- 
self) than she could look at the sun shining. He was 
leaning down towards her from his big horse, and Janet 
felt very uncomfortable, confused, and distressed. 

Oh, but you must not,” she said — not keep her for 
me. It is very kind, and I will never forget it, to let 
me ride her — and she is a delightful pony. But I could 
not take her as a present, and I could not buy her, and 
you must just — you must just — never mind, for I can- 
not help it. Oh, I am afraid it has been all wrong,” 
cried Janet, though she could not tell why. 

Not a bit,” said Charlie Blackmore. It’s been the 
happiest time I’ve had all my life, and if you will never 
forget, as you say — ” 

‘‘How should I forget?” said Janet. “You have 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


153 


been so very kind, and she is the most delightful pony 
I ever saw. But please let us go home now, for they 
will be sure to miss me, and everything is in a confusion, 
for it is our last day.” 

“ That’s just the very reason why I would like to 
keep you a little longer,” said Charlie ; “ for what am I 
to do after you’re gone ? I will just wait and think 
long till you come back. It’s a long, long time till next 
year, and I’m feared you’ll never think more of me, or 
the pony, when you’re gone.” 

“ Oh, yes I will, indeed I will,” said Janet. Oh, 
Mr. Charlie, let us get back. I am afraid somebody will 
see us — and mother will be vexed.” 

“ Well, if it must be so — here we are at the little gate,” 
he said, with a sigh. He got off his horse and fastened 
it, and then lifted her off the pony. What are ye 
going to give me for my hire,” he said, holding her for 
a moment. ‘‘I’ve been a good groom to ye. Just a 
kiss for my pains before you go.” 

“ Oh !” cried Janet, wrenching herself away. Fright 
and shame and anger gave her wings. She darted in 
at the little gate which gave access to a side path towards 
the back of the house, and fled without ever looking 
back. But she had not gone far when she ran full upon 
Beaufort, who was going tranquilly along across the 
park, just where the path debouched. She was upon 
him before either of them perceived. Janet was flushed 
with shame and terror, and her eyes were full of tears. 
She gave a cry of alarm when she saw who it was. 


154 


LADY CAR: 


Janet? What’s the matter? You look as if some- 
thing had happened.” 

“ Oh !” she cried, with a long breath. ‘‘ It is nothing, 
Beau. I was only frightened !” 

“ Who frightened you ?” he said. ‘‘ What’s the mat- 
ter ? Why, child, you are trembling all over. Are you 
running from any one?” 

“ N — no !” said Janet, drawing herself away from his 
observation — and it flashed into her guilty mind that 
she had passed some cows peacefully grazing ; I was 
frightened — for the cows.” 

‘‘ The cows !” It was greatly in Beaufort’s way that 
he was too much a gentleman to be able to suggest to 
any one, especially a lady, that what she said was not true. 
He said, with some severity, “ I did not know you were 
so nervous. You had better go at once to your mother. 
She has been looking for you everywhere.” He took 
off his hat in a grave way, which made Janet more 
ashamed than ever, and went on without even looking 
back. She threw herself down on the grass when he 
was out of sight, and cried in a wild tumult and passion 
which she herself did not understand. Beau did not 
believe her. What did he think ; what would he say ? 
But this was not what made J anet cry. 

Mr. Beaufort walked on, startled, to the gate, and when 
he emerged upon the road he saw some one riding off in 
the distance, a tall flgure on a tall horse, that he thought 
he recognized, for Charlie Blackmore was a very well- 
known flgure. The horseman was lea*ding a pony with 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


155 


a lady’s saddle. Beaufort did not put two and two to- 
gether, being too much bewildered by the suggestion of 
something mysterious that darted through his mind. 
But he shook his head as he walked along, and said 
“ Poor Carry !” under his breath. 

Lady Car did not see Janet till she had bathed her 
eyes and calmed herself down. She had not, however, 
quite effaced the traces of her agitation. Her mother 
called her, and put an arm around her — “Janet, I can 
see you have been crying. Is it because you’re sorry 
to go away ?” 

“Yes, mother,” said Janet, trembling. 

“ It is very strange,” said Lady Car, “ and I am glad. 
Oh, I wish we could feel alike, dear, you and I. I used 
to think a girl would always follow her mother. The 
boy might take his own way, but the girl — Why are 
you so fond of the Towers, dear ?” 

Janet trembled, for she was not thinking of the Tow- 
ers, nor was she sorry, but only startled and frightened 
and confused. But she dared not throw herself on her 
mother and tell her what was in her mind. She said, 
dully, with a summoning of old artificial enthusiasms 
which would not answer to her call, “ I suppose it is be- 
cause we were born here.” 

“ Perhaps that is a reason,” Carry said. 

“ And then it’s father’s house, and it will be Tom’s,” 
said the girl. 

Her mother loosed her arm, faintly, with a sigh. 
“Yes, my dear, tfiese are all good reasons,” she said, re- 




156 


LADY CAB: 


suming her habitual gentle calm. She had not been 
able to help making another little futile effort to draw 
her child to herself. And it had not been successful, 
that was all she knew. She could not have guessed 
with what tumultuous passion that young bosom was 
beating, nor how difficult it had been for Janet to keep 
down her agitation and say no more. 




THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


157 


CHAPTER XIIL 

It was some years before the Towers was visited 
again. Tom went to Oxford and had a not very fortu- 
nate career there, which gave his mother a certain justi- 
fication in resisting all attempts to take her back to 
what she felt to be so ill-omened a house. Beaufort 
took the common-sense part in these controversies. 
What did one house or another matter ? he said. Why 
should one be ill-omened more than another ? As well 
say that Oxford was ill-omened, where Tom got into 
scrapes rather more easily than he could have done else- 
where ; indeed, even Easton, the most peaceable place 
in the world, had not been without dangers for the 
headstrong boy whose passions were so strong and his 
prudence so small. A boy who is not to be trusted to 
keep his word, who cares only for his own pleasure, who 
likes everything he ought not to like and cares for noth- 
ing that he ought, how should he be safe anywhere ? 
Beaufort was too polite to say all these things about 
Carry’s boy, but he tried his best to persuade her that 
the discipline of having guests to entertain, and the occu- 
pation of shooting — something to do,” which is so es- 
sential for every creature — would be the best things 
possible for Tom. Probably he was right and she in judi- 


158 


LADY CAR: 


cious. Who can tell beforehand what procedure is the 
best? But poor Lady Oar could not get out of her 
eyes Toni’s wild aspect as he had burst into the hall, on 
that dreadful evening, across the track of the procession 
going in to dinner. Peccadilloes of this kind had since 
been kept out of her sight, and she had tried to convince 
herself that it was the place and not the boy who had 
been in the wrong. And Janet somehow had come to 
share her mother’s disinclination for the Towers. Janet 
had received a letter, not long after her return to Easton, 
which had plunged her into the deepest alarm ; it had, 
indeed, reached her innocently enough, without any re- 
mark, being taken for a letter from one of her cousins 
at Dalrulzian, but it frightened her more than words 
could say. She had despatched a furtive note in reply, 
imploring “Mr. Charlie” not to write- — oh, not to write 
any more ! — and promising eagerly not to forget either 
him or the pony if he only would do what she asked, 
and not write again. And poor Janet had been on the 
tenterhooks for a long time, terrified every day to see 
another missive arrive. She could scarcely believe in 
her good-fortune when she found herself unmolested ; 
but she was too much frightened to wish to return to 
the Towers. And thus time went on, which is so much 
longer to the young than it is to the old. Lady Car, in- 
deed, was not old, but the children were so determined on 
believing her so, and her life of disappointments had 
been so heavy, that she fell very early into the passive 
stage. All that she had done had been so ineffectual, the 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


159 


result had been so completely unresponsive to her efforts ; 
at least, it seemed the only policy to accept everything, 
to attempt nothing. Life at Easton had accordingly 
fallen into a somewhat dull but exceedingly comfortable 
routine. Beaufort’s beautiful library was a place where 
he read the papers, or a novel, or some other unfatiguing 
book. Sometimes his studies were classical ; that is to 
say, he went over his favorite bits of classical authors, 
in delightful dilettantism, and felt that his occupations 
were not frivolous, but the highest that could occupy 
the mind. He was quite contented, though his life was 
not an eventful one. He had, he said, no desire to shine. 
Sometimes he rode into Codalton to the county club; 
sometimes he went up to town to the Athenaeum, to see 
what was going on. His wife’s society was always pleas- 
ant to him in the intervals. Nothing could be more agree- 
able, more smooth and soft and refined and pleasurable 
than his life ; nothing more unlike the life of high en- 
deavor and power of which Lady Car had dreamed. Poor 
Lady Car ! She had dreamed of so many things which 
had come to nothing. And she had much to make her 
happy : a serene and tranquil life ; a husband full of af- 
fection. Her son, indeed, was likely, people thought, to 
give her trouble. No doubt she had reason to be anxious 
about her son. But, happily, he was not dependent upon 
his own industry, nor was it of very much importance to 
him to do well at college. A young man with a good 
estate may sow his wild oats, and all be well. And this 
was the only rumpled leaf in her bed of roses, people said. 


160 


LADY CAB: 


She herself never disclosed to anybody what was in 
her inmost heart. She had a smile for them all. The 
only matter in which she stood for her own way was 
that question of going to Scotland — not there, not there ! 
but anywhere else — anything else. She fell into a sort 
of petite sante during these years. She said she was not 
ill — not ill at all, only languid and lazy — but gradu- 
ally fell into the quiescent condition which might be 
appropriate to a mother of seventy, but not to one of 
forty. Tom and Janet did not see much difference be- 
tween these ages, and as for Beaufort, the subdued and 
gentle charm of his wife’s character was quite appro- 
priate to a cessation from active ventures. He liked 
her better almost upon her sofa, or taking a quiet walk 
through the garden leaning upon his arm, her wishes all 
confined within that peaceful enclosure, happy to watch 
the moon rise and the sun set, and apparently caring 
for nothing more. He talked to her of the light and 
shade, the breadth of the quiet, soft landscape, the stars 
in the sky, or about the new books, and sometimes what 
was going on — everything, he would have said. They 
were spectators of the uneasy world, which rolled on as 
if they were outside of it in some little Paradise of their 
own, watching how men “ play such pranks before high 
heaven as make the angels weep.” He was fond t)f 
commenting on all this, on the futility of effort, on the 
way in which people flung themselves against the im- 
possible, trying to do what no man could ever do, to af- 
fect the movement of the spheres. He would smile at 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


161 


statesmen and philanthropists, and all kinds of restless 
people, from his little throne on the lawn, looking out 
over the peaceful landscape. And Lady Car would re- 
spond with a smile, with a glance that often lingered 
upon him as he talked, and in which he sometimes felt 
there was something that he did not quite understand. 
But what could it be — that something that he did not 
understand? He understood most things, and talked 
beautifully. He was the most perfect gentleman ; his 
every tone, his every thought was full of refinement. 
And Lady Car was well pleased — who could doubt ? — to 
lie back in her deep chair and listen. What happiness 
could a woman — a woman no longer young, not in very 
good health, an idealist, a minor poet — what could she 
desire more ? 

There came, however, a time when the claims of the 
Towers could no longer be ignored. Tom came of age, 
and Lady Car could no longer combat the necessity of 
going back to hold the necessary festivities and put him 
in possession of his lands and his home. Tom had come 
altogether to blows with his college and all its function- 
aries by this time, and had been requested to remove 
himself from the university in a somewhat hasty man- 
ner, which he declared loudly was very good fun, but 
did not, perhaps, in his secret heart enjoy the joke so 
much as he made appear — for he had a great deal of 
that Scotch pride which cannot bear to fail, even when 
he had done everything to bring the catastrophe about. 
He had not met with many reproaches at home, for 
11 


162 


LADT GAR: 


Lady Car was so convinced of the great futility of any- 
thing she could say that, save for the Oh, Tom !” with 
which he was received and the tear which made her eyes 
more lucid than usual, she made no demonstration at all 
of her distress. Beaufort looked very grave, but took lit- 
tle notice. ‘^It was evident that th:s must have come 
sooner or later,’’ he said, coldly, with a tone in which 
Tom read contempt. 

“ Why did you send me, then,” the young man cried, 
reddening sullenly, ‘‘if you knew that this was what 
must come ?” 

“ I suppose your mother sent you because it is con- 
sidered necessary for a gentleman,” Beaufort said. 

“ And I suppose you mean I’m not one,” cried Tom. 

“I never said so,” his stepfather answered, coldly. 
Janet seized upon her brother’s arm and drew him 
away. 

“ Oh, what is the good of quarrelling with Beau ? 
Did you expect nobody was to say a word?” cried 
Janet. 

“Well,” said Tom, “they can’t prevent me coming 
of age next year, whatever they do, and then I should 
like to know who will have any right to say a word.” 

“ Mother will always have a right to say whatever 
she pleases, Tom.” 

“Oh, mother!” he said. Janet shook him by the 
arm she held. She cried, passionately, 

“ I wouldn’t if it had been me. I shouldn’t have let 
any one say that what was needed for a gentleman was 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 163 

too much for me. Oh, I would have died sooner!’’ 
Janet said. 

He shook her off with a muttered oath. “ Much you 
know about gentlemen — or ladies either 1 I know some- 
thing of you that if I were to tell mother — ” 

“ What ?” Janet cried, almost with a shriek. 

Oh, I know, and if you don’t sing very small I’ll 
tell ; but, mind. I’ll not say Oh, Den ! like mother. I’ll 
turn you out of house and home if you carry on with 
any fellow when you’re with me.” 

“ What do you mean ?” said Janet ; but her con- 
science was too much for her. She could not maintain 
a bold front. The recollection came burning to her 
cheeks, and brought a hot flood of tears to her eyes. I 
only rode the pony. I meant no harm. I didn’t know 
it was wrong. Oh, Tom ! Tom, don’t tell mother,” she 
cried. 

“You had better behave, then,” said Tom, “and 
don’t think you can crow over me. I’ve done nothing 
at all. It’s only those old saps that cannot bear to see 
a young fellow having his fun.” 

It was certainly a great contrast to the humiliated 
condition in which he came home to think of all the 
immense preparations that were making to do the 
young 'scapegrace honor. Yery far from pointing a 
moral to young men of Tom’s tastes was his triumph- 
ant coming of age after the academical disgrace. No 
disgrace, however, can hinder a young man from attain- 
ing his twenty-first birthday nor change the universal 


164 


LADY GAR: 


custom which makes that moment a period of congratu- 
lation and celebration, as if it were by any virtue of his 
that the boy became a man. It occurred to some of 
the family counsellors who had to be summoned for the 
great occasion that, considering his past behavior, Tom’s 
majority should be passed over with as little merry- 
making as possible. But Beaufort once more was the 
young fellow’s champion. He was not the sort of man 
to take lightly the stigma of the university, and there- 
fore he was listened to with all the more attention. I 
must repeat again,” he said, ^Hhat there is nothing in 
all this to prevent Tom from doing well enough in his 
natural position. It might be ruin to some boys, but 
not to him. I never expected him to do anything at 
Oxford, and I am not surprised at what has happened. 
But everybody is not thinking of this as we are. A 
great many people will never have heard of it, nor 
would they attach any importance to it if they did hear. 
I have told you before. Carry, that the best of women 
are unjust to boys. It is very natural that it should be 
so. Even now, however, there is nothing to prevent 
Tom from doing very well.” 

“ The thing is that he seems to be getting a reward 
for his foolishness, instead of any punishment,” said 
Edith Erskine, who was, as she thought, upholding her 
sister’s view. As for Carry herself, she had said noth- 
ing. To discuss her boy’s follies was more than she 
was capable of. She could not silence the others who 
spoke, but she only looked at them ; she could not speak. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


165 


“ He has been foolish at Oxford, and the authorities 
there have punished him ; but we have no fight to put 
back the clock in his life, and keep him out of his rights 
for anything he has done. I am sure that is what his 
mother thinks — ” 

‘‘Hfs mother has always been too indulgent, and 
this is what has come of it,” said old Lord Lindores, 
shaking his head. He would have sent Tom oflE to 
Africa or somewhere with an unfortunate if highly 
paid bear-leader from the university to keep him in 
order, if Tom would have submitted on the verge of 
his lawful freedom to any such bondage ; but this his 
grandfather did not take into account. He shook his 
head over Carry’s indulgence, and did not at all under- 
stand the look which she turned upon him, and in 
which there were unspeakable things. You may be 
angry if you please, my dear, but I must tell you my 
opinion. The boy has been spoiled all along. He is not 
of a nature to stand it; he wanted a vigorous hand 
over him. You should have remembered the stock of 
which he came.” 

Lady Car looked at her father, with a light in her 
mild eyes such as no one could remember to have seen 
there before. ‘‘ Why was my boy of that stock ?” she 
said, in a voice which was very low, but full of a pas- 
sion that could not be restrained. Her mother and sis- 
ter started, with one impulse, to stop further utterance. 
‘‘ Carry !” they cried. 

“ What ? What did she say ?” cried Lord Lindores ; 


166 


LADY CAE: 


but neither Carry nor any of the others repeated what 
she had said. 

After this strange little scene there was, however, no 
more said about Tom’s coming of age, which they 
could not have kept back if they would. But all kinds 
of preparations were made to make the celebration wor- 
thy, if not of Tom, yet of the position which he ought 
to take in the county so far as wealth went. His long 
minority, and the scrupulous care with which both his 
estate and his money had been managed, made Tom 
one of the richest commoners in Scotland — the very 
richest, perhaps, whose income came from property 
alone, and not from trade ; and though the county did 
not recollect his father with very particular regard nor 
anticipate very much from himself — for everybody 
knew those unsatisfactory points in Tom’s history which 
it was hoped had attracted no observation — ^yet Lady 
Car had gained all respect, and for her sake, and per- 
haps a little for their own amusement, the neighbors 
threw themselves readily into all the details of the 
feastings, and drank his health and wished him joy 
with every appearance of friendliness and sincerity. 
And there were many ladies heard to declare that a 
good wife would just be the making of the young man. 
Perhaps this sentiment, as much as respect for Lady 
Car, made the county people warm in their sympathy. 
There were a great many young ladies in the county ; 
it might very well happen that one of these was des- 
tined by Providence to be the making of the second 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


167 


Tom Torrance of the Towers. And the parents who 
thought, with a softened consideration of all the circum- 
stances that had been against him, that a daughter of 
theirs might perhaps have that mission to fulfil, had 
certainly much less to tolerate and forgive than Lord 
Lindores had when he married his daughter to Tom’s 
father. Therefore everybody accepted the invitations 
that were sent out, and for a week the house blazed 
with light and rang with festive sounds, and life stirred 
and quickened throughout the entire neighborhood. 
The long interregnum was over, and Tom had come 
into his kingdom. 

Happily an event of this kind exercises a certain in- 
fiuence on all minds. Perhaps Lady Car allowed her- 
self to be moved by her husband’s optimism, and was 
able with him to believe that Tom might do very well, 
notwithstanding his youthful indiscretions; perhaps it 
was only that mild and indulgent despair which had 
taken possession of her inmost soul, and which made it 
evident that nothing that could be done by her would 
affect her boy, and that all she was now good for was to 
tolerate and forgive ; but at least she presided over all 
the rejoicings with apparent pleasure, sparing no fa- 
tigue, thinking of everything, resuming to a wonderful 
extent the more active habits of former years. And 
Beaufort played to perfection the role of the jpere nohle^ 
the dignified, disinterested paternal guardian giving his 
support and countenance to the novice without ever in- 
terfering with his pretensions as the real master of the 


168 


LADY CAR: 


house. Indeed, Beaufort, with his fastidious superiority, 
had much greater influence over Tom than his mother 
had, and overawed him as no one else was capable of 
doing ; so that everything went well during this great 
era, and the young laird appeared to the best advantage, 
making those parents of daughters say to one another 
that really there was nothing that May or Beatrice need 
object to. Such birds of prey as hung about the horizon, 
even in these moral regions, perhaps sharpened their 
beaks — but that was out of sight. And the only one of 
the party who did not wear a guise of happiness was 
Janet, about whom there hung a nervous haze of sup- 
pressed feeling altogether alien to her character, and 
which no one could fathom. Perhaps it would have 
been more comprehensible had any one heard the occa- 
sional word which now and then dropped from Tom, 
and which he repeated with a mischievous boy’s pleas- 
ure in the trouble he could create. “ Are you going on 
the pony to-day he would ask, in Lady Car’s presence, 
with a significant look and laugh. Are you off for the 
East road?” No one but Janet knew what he meant. 
He threw these stones at her, out of the very height of 
his own triumph. And Janet dared scarcely go out, 
even in the protection of her mother’s company, lest she 
should see Charlie Blackmore turning reproachful eyes 
upon her. He did pass the carriage on one occasion 
and took off his hat, but the salutation was so universal 
that no one noticed who the individual was, and Janet 
alone saw the look. Yet even for Janet nothing dis- 
agreeable happened during these eight days. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


169 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Lady Car had done too much, the doctor said. The 
last dinner had been given ; the last guest had depart- 
ed, and life at the Towers was about to begin under its 
new aspect — a changed aspect, and one which those of 
the spectators who were free from any personal feeling 
on the subject regarded with some curiosity. How was 
Tom to assume his new position as head of the house in 
presence of his mother and stepfather? Were they to 
remain there as his guests? Were they to leave along 
with the other visitors ? Tom himself had fully made 
up his mind on this subject. He was, indeed, a little 
nervous about what Beau would say, and kept his eyes 
steadily away from that gentleman when he made his 
little announcement, which was done at breakfast on 
the first morning after the family party was left alone. 
It must be premised that Tom’s birthday was in the end 
of July, and that by this time August had begun. 

I say, mother,” Tom said. He gave a glance round 
to make quite sure that the newspaper, widely unfolded, 
made a screen between himself and Beau. ‘‘ I mean to 
go in for the grouse this year on the Fatullo moor.” 

I have always heard it Was too small for such sport,” 
said Lady Car. 


170 


LADY GAR: 


“ Oh, I don’t know that. You never would let me 
try. The keepers have had it all to themselves, and I 
dare say they’ve made a good thing out of it. But this 
year I’m going to make a change. I’ve asked a lot of 
fellows for the 12th.” 

‘‘You are losing no time, Tom. I am glad to find 
you are so hospitable,” said his mother. 

“ Oh, hospitable be hanged ! I want to have some 
fun,” said the young master. “ And I say, mother ” — 
he gave another glance at the newspaper which was 
still opened out in front of his stepfather. And Beau 
had made no remark. “ Mother, I say, I don’t want, 
you know, to hurry you ; but a lot of fellows together 
are sometimes a bit rowdy. I mean, you know, you 
mightn’t perhaps like — You’re so awfully quiet at 
Easton. I mean, you know — ” 

“ That you want us to leave the Towers, Tom.” 

“ Oh, I don’t go so far as that. I only meant — 
Why, mother, don’t you know ? It’s all different. It’s 
not the same kind of thing — it’s — ” 

“ I understand,” she said, in her quiet tones, and with 
her usual smile. “We had taken thought for that. 
Edward, we had spoken of going — when was it ?” 

“To-morrow,” said Beaufort, behind his paper. 
“ That’s all settled. I had meant to tell you this morn- 
ing, Tom. No need to have been in such a hurry ; you 
know your mother is not fond of the Towers.” 

“ I didn’t mean that there was any huri-y,” cried Tom, 
very red. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


171 


‘‘ Perhaps not, my boy, but it looks like it. However, 
we’re both of one mind, which is convenient. The 
only thing that is wanted is a Bradshaw, for we had not 
settled yet about the trains.” 

‘^To-morrow’s awfully soon. I hope you won’t go 
to-morrow, mother. I never thought you’d move be- 
fore a week at the soonest. I say ! I’ll be left all alone 
here if you go to-morrow,” Tom cried. But Beaufort 
took no notice of his remonstrance, and got his Brad- 
shaw and made out his plans as if it had been the most 
natural thing in the world. A few hours after, how- 
ever, Lady Car, who had allowed that she was tired 
after the racket of the past week, was found to have 
fainted without giving any sign of such intentions. It 
was Janet who found her lying insensible on her sofa, 
and as the girl thought dead. Janet flew down-stairs for 
help, and meeting her brother, cried, “ You have killed 
mother !” as she darted past. And the alarm and hor- 
ror of the household was great. Tom himself galloped 
off for the doctor at the most breakneck pace and in 
great compunction and remorse. But the doctor was, 
on the whole, reassuring when he came. He.pronounced 
the patient, who had by that time come to herself and 
was just as usual, though a trifle paler, to be overdone, 
which was very well explained by all that she had been 
going through and the unusual strain upon her — and 
pronounced her unfit for so long a journey so soon. 
When, however, Beaufort informed him that the Tow- 
ers had never agreed with his wife — an intimation at 


172 


LADY CAB: 


which the doctor, who knew much better than Beau- 
fort did what the Towers had been to poor Lady Car, 
nodded his head understandingly — he suggested break- 
ing the journey. And this was how it happened that 
the family went to St. Andrew’s, where many things 
were to happen which no one had foreseen. Tom, still 
compunctious and as tender as it was possible for him 
to be, and unable to persuade himself that he was not 
to blame for his mother’s illness, as well as much over- 
whelmed by the prospect of being left entirely to his 
own company for nearly a fortnight, accompanied the 
party to that place. He thought he would take a look 
at the golf, and at least would find it easier to get rid of 
a few days there than alone in his own house. To do 
him justice, he was a little anxious about his mother, 
too. To think that you have killed your mother, or 
even have been instrumental in killing her, is not a 
pleasant thought. 

Lady Car got quickly well amid the sea breezes. 
They got her a house on the cliff, where from her sofa 
she could look out upon the sea, and all the lights and 
shades on the Forfar coast, and the shadows of the far- 
distant ships like specks on the horizon, like hopes (she 
thought) — always appearing afar, passing away, never 
near enough to be possible. She fioated away from all 
acute pain as she lay recovering, and recovered, too, her 
beloved gift of verse, and made a very charming, but 
sad, little poem called Sails on the Horizon,” express- 
ing this idea. Lady Car thought to herself, as she lay 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


173 


there, that her hopes had all been like that, far away, 
just within sight, passing without an approach, without 
a possibility of coming near. None of those ships ever 
changed their course or drew near St. Andrew’s Bay ; 
yet the white, distant sail would hang upon the horizon 
line as if it might turn its helm at any moment and 
come. And hope had come only so to Carry — never to 
stay, only in the distance. In the quiet of convales- 
cence and of that profound, immeasurable despair which 
took the form of perfect peace, that renunciation of all 
that she had wished for on earth, it was a pleasure for 
her to put that conceit into words. It was only a con- 
ceit, she was aware. 

Presently she became able to go out, to be drawn in 
a chair along the sands, or away in the other direction 
to the line of the eastern coast, with all its curious rocks 
and coves. About ten days after her arrival in St. An- 
drew’s Lady Car made one of those expeditions, accom- 
panied by Beaufort and Janet. They took her in her 
little vehicle as far as it would go, and then she walked 
a little down to the shore, to a spot which she recollect- 
ed in her youth, where a grassy bank of the close, short 
seaside grass bordered a ridge of broken rocks higher 
than the level of the beach. Over this line of rock 
there was a wonderful view of the little town isolated 
upon its headland, with the fine cluster of the ruined 
cathedral, the high, square tower of St. Eule, the gray 
heap of the destroyed castle, the little port below, 
set in the shining sea, and great breadths of the blue 


174 


LADY GAR: 


firmament banded with linos of pearly cloud. Here 
Carry sat down to rest, while her companions went far- 
ther along the coast to the curious little bay with its 
bristling rocks, where stands the famous Spindle, left 
among the sea-pools by some gigantic Horma of the 
North. The wide air, the great sky, the sense of space 
and freshness, and separation from all intrusive things ; 
and, on the other hand, the picture made by that clus- 
ter of human habitations and ancient work of man de- 
faced and worn, standing in the rays of the afternoon 
sun which streamed over it from the west, made a per- 
fect combination. The ridge of red rocks and piled 
stones, which cut off all vulgarities of the foreground 
and relieved it in warm color against the gray headland 
and the wonderful blue sea, shut in Lady Car’s retreat, 
though the coast road wound on behind her, communi- 
cating by a rocky passage, almost like a stair, with the 
sands below. Lady Car seated herself upon the grass. 
She did not care even to sketch ; all her old pursuits 
had dropped from her. She was content to sit still, 
with her eyes more often upon the wide line of the ho- 
rizon than on any intermediate point, however attractive. 
There was a sort of luxury of the soul in that width of 
stainless, silent air, which required nothing, not even 
thought, but filled her with a faint yet exquisite sense 
of calm. The peace of Grod — did she dare to call it so? 
Certainly it passed understanding that she should sit 
in this beatitude, in a calm so complete, with so many — 
oh, so many — things to make her anxious and to make 
her sad. Still, so it was. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


175 


She did not know how long she had sat there, in that 
wide universe of sea and sky, when her attention was 
first called to voices underneath the ridge of rock. The 
sands beyond were on a lower level, and it might well 
be that people underneath might discuss the most pri- 
vate affairs without any thought of possible listeners 
above. Carry had heard the murmur of the voices for 
some time before she took any heed of them or distin- 
guished one from another. These tones, she presently 
observed, were very unlike the peace all around ; there 
was a sound of confiict in them, and now and then a 
broken note as if the woman sobbed. For it was appar- 
ent at once that the two were a man and a woman, and soon 
that there was some controversy between them. When 
Lady Car began to awaken out of her dream of calm to 
become aware of these two people below and the dis- 
cussion or quarrel which was every moment increasing 
in intensity, she did not perhaps know how to make her 
presence known, or rather, perhaps, it was something in 
the sound of one of the voices which bewildered and 
confused her. At first she thought, with a vague 
trouble, it was a voice she knew. Then she started 
from her grassy seat, with a horrible sensation, as if she 
were hearing over again, though not addressed to her- 
self, one of those mocking, threatening, insulting fioods 
of words which had once been the terror of her life ! 
Torrance ! Had she lived to hear him speak again ? 
She had escaped from all imagination of him in this 
beautiful and distant scene. What was it that, like a 


176 


LADY CAB: 


terrible wind of recollection, like an hour come back 
from the miserable past, made her hear his voice again ? 

She had risen up in her dismay and alarm, almost 
with an impulse of flight, to get out of his way, lest he 
should find her again, when an impression almost more 
terrible still made her pause and hold her throbbing 
breast with both hands. She turned her face towards 
the rock with a faint cry, and sank down again upon 
the grass. There could be no doubt that it was a man 
speaking to a woman over whom he had almost absolute 
power, a husband to a wife — or perhaps — but Carry 
knew no other relationship than that which permitted 
such tones, and when her first irrational panic was over 
she became aware that it was the voice of Tom. 

To whom was he speaking? She did not ask what 
he was saying. She could not hear the words, but she 
knew them. A woman who has once borne such a 
storm recognizes it again. To whom could Tom speak 
in that voice of the supreme? — mocking, threatening, 
pouring forth abuse and wrath. To whom did the boy 
dare to speak so ? He had no wife. 

The voices grow louder ; the two seem to be parting ; 
the man hurrying away, discharging a volley at his com- 
panion as he left her, the woman weeping, following, 
calling him back. Lady Car sat breathless, her terrified 
eyes fixed on the path behind, up which she heard him 
coming. “ Go back, I tell you ; I have nothing more 
to say to you,” he cried. 

His countenance, flushed with rage, appearing above 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. ' 177 

the edge of the rocks, while he half turned back, wav- 
ing the other away, brought confirmation certain of 
Lady Car’s fears. She rose again and made a step tow- 
ards him, tottering in every limb, as in other days, when 
his father had beaten her to the ground with such an- 
other torrent. But to whom, to whom was the boy 
speaking ? She cried out, in a voice of anguish,^ Tom !” 

He started in his turn so violently that he stumbled 
on the rocks and almost fell. Mother !” he cried, in- 
stinctively. Then he turned round with a hoarse roar 
of “ Back ! back !” cursing himself for that betrayal. 

Tom, what is it ? to whom were you speaking ? — 
answer me ! To whom did you dare to speak like that 

“ What are you doing here ?” he said. Listening ? 
I never knew you do that before, mother — come along ! 
this isn’t a place for you.” 

“ To whom were you speaking, Tom ?” 

“Me! I was speaking to nobody; there’s some 
sweethearts or something carrying on down there. I 
don’t meddle with what is none of my concerns. Come 
along ! I am not going to leave you here.” 

He seized her arm to draw her away, and Lady Car 
saw that his rage had turned to tremor. He looked at 
her from under his lowering eyebrows with that fierce 
panic which is sometimes in the eyes of a terrified dog 
ready to fly at and rend any one in wild truculence of 
fear. 

“ I am not going from here till my husband comes 
for me — nor till I know what this means,” said Lady 
12 


178 


LADY CAR: 


Car. She was trembling all over, and her heart so 
beating that every wild throb shook her frame. But 
she was not afraid of her son’s violence. And other 
steps were drawing near. As Lady Car leaned upon 
a corner of the rock, supporting herself, there grad- 
ually appeared up the ascent a young woman in 
very fine, but flimsy attire, her face flushed with cry- 
ing and quarrelling, dabbing her cheeks with a hand- 
kerchief like a ball all gathered up in her hand. The 
impression of bright color and holiday dress, so incon- 
sistent with the violent scene through which she had 
been passing, and the probable tragical circumstances 
in which the unhappy girl stood, threw a sort of gro- 
tesque misery into the midst of the horror. 

Oh !” cried the new-comer, “ he called you his 
mother, he did ! If you are his mother, it’s you most 
^s I ought to see.” 

Hold your cursed tongue,” cried Tom, beside him- 
self, and get off with you ! I’ve told you so before. 
You’re not fit to speak to my — to a lady. Go ! go !” 

“ You think it grand to say that,” cried the girl, evi- 
dently emboldened by the presence of a third party, 
‘^but you may just give it up. I’m not ashamed to 
speak to any lady. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed 
of. I’ve got my marriage lines to show, and my wed- 
ding-ring on mj finger. Look at that, ma’am,” she 
cried, dragging a glove off a red and swollen hand. It 
was with tears and trouble and excitement that she 
was so swollen and red. She thrust her hand, with in- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


179 


deed a wedding-ring upon it, in Lady Car’s face. Look 
at that, ma’am; there can’t be no mistake about 
that.” 

I must sit down ; I cannot stand,” said Carry. 
“ Come here, if you please, and tell me who you 
are.” 

She’s not fit to come where you are. I told you to 
go,” said Tom. “ Go, and I’ll send somebody to settle 
— you’ve no business here.” 

“ If she’s your mother, Frank, I won’t deceive no- 
body. I’m Mrs. Francis Lindores, and I’ve got my 
marriage lines to show for it. I’m not ashamed to look 
anybody in the face. I’ve got my marriage li — ” 

“ Mrs. — what ?” said Lady Car. 

“ Mrs. Francis Lindores. I never thought but what 
he meant honorable, and my own mother was at the 
wedding, and everything right. He wants to say now 
that it’s no marriage ; but it is — it is. It’s in the regis- 
ter all right, where we signed in the vestry. Oh, Frank, 
I know you’re only talking to frighten me, but your 
mother will make it all right.” 

Lady Car and her son exchanged but one glance : on 
her part, a look of anguished inquiry searching his face 
for confirmation of this tremendous statement — on his, 
the look of a fierce but whipped hound, ready to tear 
any one asunder that came near him, yet abject in con- 
scious guilt. The mother put her hand to her breast as 
if to hide where the bullet had gone in. She said, in 
a voice interrupted by her quickened breathing, 


180 


LADY GAB: 


‘‘ Excuse me a little, I am not very well ; but tell me 
everything — tell me the truth. Did you say that you 
were — married to this young gentleman 

‘‘ She’ll say anything,” cried Tom, hoarsely. She’ll 
swear anything. She’s not fit to come near you. Go 
away, I tell you, curse you — you shall have everything 
you want if you go away.” 

Be silent, Tom ; at present she has me, not you, to 
answer. Tell me — ” 

“You call him Tom,” said the young woman, with 
surprise ; it’s perhaps a pet name — for his real name 
is Frank Lindores ; and that’s on my cards that I got 
printed — and that’s who I am; and I can bring wit- 
nesses. My marriage lines, I’ve got ’em in the hotel 
where I’m staying. If you’re his mother, I’m his wife, 
and he can’t deny it. Oh, Frank ! the lady looks kind. 
Don’t deny it, don’t deny it ! She’ll forgive you. Don’t 
deny the truth.” 

The truth !” cried Tom, forgetting himself in his 
heat. ^^You can see how much truth is in it by the 
name she tells you — and I wasn’t of age till last week,” 
cried the precocious ruflSan, with a laugh which again 
was like the fierce bark of a whipped hound. 

All Lady Car’s senses had come back to her in the 
shock of this horror. ‘‘You married her — in the name 
of Francis Lindores — thinking that^ and that you were 
under age would make it void. If you’ve anything to 
say that I should not’ believe this, say it quick, Tom — 
lest I should die first and think my boy a — ” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


181 


She leaned back her pale head against the rocks, and 
one of those spasms passed over her which had already 
scared the household at the Towers; but the superior 
poignancy of the mental anguish kept Lady Car from 
complete unconsciousness. She heard their voices 
vaguely contending through the half-trance ; then slow- 
ly the light came back to her eyes. The young woman 
was kneeling beside her with a vinaigrette in her hot 
hand. “ Oh, smell at this, do ! it’s the best thing in the 
world for a faint. Oh, poor lady ! I wish I had never 
said a word rather than make her so bad !” 

Lady Car opened her eyes, to see the stranger kneeling, 
with an anxious face, by her side, while Tom stood, lower- 
ing, looking on. It crossed her mind that perhaps her 
boy would have been glad had she died and this disclos- 
ure been buried with her. The stab of this thought was 
so keen that she came completely to herself, restored 
by that sharp remedy of superior pain. 

“I do not think she is bad,” she said, faintly. ‘‘I 
think she has an honest face. Tom, is that true ?” 

“ It’s all a piece of nonsense, mother, as I told you. 
It was just to please her. She was not too particular — 
to have the show of a wedding, that was all. She knew 
very well — ” 

The girl struggled to her feet. She seized him by the 
arm and shook him in her passion. 

“ ril tear your eyes out,” she cried, ‘‘ if you speak 
like that of me! Oh, lady! we’re married as safe as 
any clergyman could marry two people.” 


r 


182 LADY CAR: 

You fool !’’ cried Tom, there’s no such person as 
Frank Lindores. And I wasn’t of age.” 

The young woman looked at him for a moment, con- 
founded. The color left her excited face ; she stood 
staring as if unable to comprehend ; then, as her senses 
came back to her, burst into a loud fit of sobbing and 
crying, throwing herself down on the grass. “ Oh, oh, 
oh!” she cried, sobbing and rocking herself. ‘‘Oh, 
whatever shall I do ? Oh, what will become of moth- 
er ?” Then, rising suddenly to her knees, she caught 
Lady Car’s dress. “ Oh, lady, lady I you’ve got a kind 
face ; do something for me ; make him do me justice ; 
make him, make him — oh, my God, listen to him !” 
cried the girl, for Tom, in the horrible triumph he 
thought he had gained, was pealing forth a harsh laugh 
— a sort of tempest tone of exultation — over the two 
helpless women at his feet. 

Beaufort, with Janet at a little distance behind him, 
came suddenly upon this strange scene. He thought at 
first that his wife was ill, and hurried forward anxious- 
ly, asking, “ What is the matter ?” He saw Carry pale 
as death, her mouth drawn, her eyes dilated, leaning 
back against the rocks, holding the hand of a girl, un- 
known, who knelt beside her, while Tom, who had 
laughed, stood over the pair with still that mirthless 
grimace distending his lips. 

“Edward,” Lady Car said, “ I have something to ask 
you ; something at once, before you ask me a question. 
A marriage under a false name — is that no marriage ? 
Tell me — tell me quick, quick !” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


183 


What a strange question !” he said. ‘^But I know 
nothing about marriages in Scotland. You know peo- 
ple say — ” 

It was not in Scotland. Quick, quick !” 

“A marriage — when a false name is given? — mean- 
ing to deceive ?” 

She said Yes ” with her lips, without any sound, a 
faint flame as of shame passing over the whiteness of 
her face. Tom thrust his hands into his pockets and 
screwed his mouth as if he would have whistled, but no 
sound came. The girl faced round, always upon her 
knees, a strange intruder into that strange group, and 
stared at Beaufort as if he had been a god. 

I don’t understand why you should ask me such 
a question. The marriage is good enough. The law 
doesn’t permit — ” 

Not if the man is under age ?” 

He can be imprisoned for perjury if he has sworn 
he is of age — as some fools do ; but what in the world 
can you want with such information as that ?” 

“Edward,” said Lady Car, with some diflSculty, her 
throat and lips being so dry, “ this is Tom’s wife.” 


184 


LADY CAM: 


CHAPTEE XV. 

She never knew how she was taken home. A horri- 
ble dream of half-conscious misery, of dreadful move- 
ment when all she wanted was to lie down and be still, 
of a confusion of sights and sounds, things dimly seen 
in strange, unnatural motion, voices all broken into one 
bewildering hum, always that sense of being taken 
somewhere where she did not want to go, when quiet 
and silence were all she desired, interposed between the 
rocky plateau of the shore and her room, in which she 
opened her eyes in the evening in the waning light to 
find Janet and her maid by her bedside, her windows 
wide open to admit the air, and Beaufort in consulta- 
tion with the doctor at the other end of the room. She 
had opened her eyes for a minute or two before every- 
thing settled into its place, and she perceived fully 
where she was. She lay in great weakness but no pain, 
remembering nothing, feeling the soft, all-enveloping 
peace, which had been round her like a mantle, covering 
all her wounds again. ‘‘Are you there, my Den? and 
is that Edward?” she said. And it was not till some 
time after, till the soft, shaded lights were lit in the 
room and all quiet and Beaufort seated by her bedside 
reading to her, that she suddenly remembered what had 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


. 185 


passed. She put out her thin hand and grasped him by 
the arm. “ Edward, was that true 

‘‘ What, Carry ? Nothing has happened but that you 
have been ill a little, and now you are better, my love, 
and you must be quiet, very quiet.” 

It is true,” she said, with her fingers clasping his 
arm. My son did that ; my son.” 

It is put all right,” said Beaufort ; “ there is no 
deadly wrong done. And the girl is very young ; she 
can be trained. Carry, my love !” 

“Yes, I know. I must keep quiet, and I will. I 
can put everything out of my thoughts now. God has 
given me the power. But he meant that^ Edward.” 

“ God knows what he meant,” said Beaufort. “ He 
did not realize. Half the harm these boys do is that 
they never realize — ” 

“ You say women are often unjust. Would men look 
over that ?” 

He got up from his chair and put down his book. 
“ You must not question me,” he said ; “you must not 
think of it at all. Put it out of your thoughts alto- 
gether, my dear love. You must think of the rest of 
us — of me and poor little Janet.” He added, after a 
moment, “ No one need ever know.” 

Certainly Beaufort was very kind. He behaved in 
all this like a true gentleman and true lover. He would 
have plucked out altogether the sting of that great 
wound had it been possible, and he was quite unaware 
of the other stings he had himself planted undermining 


186 


LADY CAB: 


her strength. She looked up at him, lying there in her 
weakness, with her beautiful smile coming back, the 
smile which was so soft, so indulgent, so tender, so all- 
forgiving, the smile that meant despair. What could 
she do more, that gentle, shipwrecked creature, un- 
able to contend with the wild seas and billows that 
went over her head? What had she ever been able 
to do? 

Janet, who did not know what was the meaning of 
it all, but had vague, horrible fancies about Tom which 
she could not clear up, went out next day by herself in 
the bright August morning to get a little air. She had 
enough of her mother in her to like the sound of the 
sea, and to be soothed by it. And the half-compre- 
hended incidents of the previous night and the alarm 
about Lady Car’s state had shaken Janet. She thought, 
with the simplicity of her age, that perhaps if she went 
away a little, was absent for an hour or so from the 
room, that her mother would not look so pale when she 
came back. And Lady Car’s smile went to Janet’s heart. 
It was too like an angel’s, she thought to herself. A 
living woman ought not to be too like an angel. Her 
eyes kept filling with tears as she wandered along, look- 
ing out upon the sea. But gradually the bright air and 
the light that was in the atmosphere and the warmth 
of the sunshine stole into Janet’s heart and dried the 
tears in her eyes. She went into the green enclosure 
of the ruined castle and sat down upon the old wall 
looking out to sea. She could see the place where she 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


187 


and Beau had come upon that strange group among the 
rocks. She had not made out yet what it meant. 

As she sat there, gazing out and lost in her own 
thoughts and wonderings, a voice suddenly sounded at 
her ear which made her start — “ Oh, my bonnie Miss 
Janet,” it said, ‘^have I found you at last!” Janet 
turned slowly round, aghast. The color forsook her 
face, and all strength seemed to die out of her. She 
had known it would come one time or other. She had 
steeled herself for such a meeting every time she had 
been compelled to leave the shelter of the Towers ; 
but now that she was far away, in a place which had 
no association with him, surely — surely she should have 
been safe now. And yet she had known beforehand, 
always known that some time this would come. His 
voice sank into her soul, taking away all her strength 
and courage. What hold Janet supposed this man to 
have over her who could tell ? She feared him as if he 
had it in his power to carry her away against her will 
or do some dreadful harm. The imagination of a girl 
has wild and causeless panics as well as gracious visions. 
She trembled before this man, with a terror which she 
did not attempt to account for. She turned round 
slowly a panic-stricken, colorless face. 

‘‘ Why, what is the matter with you, my bonnie little 
lady ? Are ye feared for me ?” 

“Oh, Mr. Charlie,” said Janet, “don’t speak to me 
here. If anybody were to see yon ! And mother — 
mother is in great trouble already. Oh, don’t speak to 
me here !” 


188 


LADY CAB: 


Do you mean you will speak to me in some other 
place ? Tm well content if ye’ll do that — some place 
where we will be more private, by ourselves. Ye may 
be sure that’s what I would like best.” 

“ I did not mean that,” said Janet, in great distress. 

Oh, Mr. Charlie, don’t speak to me at all ! I am very 
unhappy — already.” 

“ It will not make you more unhappy to speak to an 
old friend like me. And who has made you unhappy, 
my bonnie lady? I wish I had the paying of him. 
It’ll be that loon of a brother of yours ?” 

How dare you speak so of my brother ?” cried 
Janet, with momentary energy, and then she began to 
cry, unable to restrain herself in her agitation. Oh, 
go away ! If you please, will you go away ?” 

And do you want to hear no more of the pony ?” 
said Charlie Blackmore. “ She’s as bonnie a little beast 
as ever stepped, and fit to carry a princess — or Miss 
Janet Torrance. I’ve kept my word. She’s just been 
bred like a princess, without doing a day’s work. I’ve 
kept her, as I said I would, for you.” 

Oh, I hope you do not mean that,” cried Janet. 

Oh, Mr. Charlie, I hope it was not my fault ! I was 
very, very young then, and I did not know there was 
any harm in it. Oh, I hope you have not kept her for 
me !” 

“ What harm was there in it ?” he said, putting his 
hand on her arm, which Janet drew away as if his touch 
had been fire. Come now. Miss Janet, you must be 


TEE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


189 


reasonable. There was no harm in it, more than there 
is in a little crack by ourselves, between you and me.” 

Janet shrank into the corner of the seat away from 
him. There was harm,” she said, for I never told 
mother ; and there is harm now, for if any one I knew 
were to come here and see us I would die of shame.” 

No, my bonnie lady, you would not die ; that’s too 
strong,” said Blackmore. “ And do you know it’s not 
civil to draw away like that. When we met in the East 
road you were not so frightened. You gave me many 
a glint of your eyes then and many a pleasant word. 
And do you mind the long rides we had, and you as 
sorry when they were over as me ? And the miles that 
1 rode to bring you the pony and give you pleasure, 
though you turn from me now?” 

“ You were very kind, Mr. Charlie,” said Janet, in a 
trembling voice. 

“ I am not saying I was kind. I would not have done 
it if I had not liked it. But you were kind then, Miss 
Janet, and you’re not kind now.” 

“ I was only a child,” Janet cried ; “ I never thought. 
I know now it was very silly — oh, more than silly. If 
I beg your pardon, oh, Mr. Charlie, will you forgive 
me, and— leave me alone ?” 

“And what if that was to break my heart?” he said. 

“ Break your heart ! Why should it do that ? Oh, 
no, no, it would not do that ; you are only laughing — ” 

“ Me laughing ! What if I had taken a fancy, then, 
for a bit small girl and set my heart upon her, but kept 


190 


LADY CAE: 


out of the way for years not to see the bonnie little 
thing till now that you’re woman grown and under- 
stand ? And all you say is to ask me to leave you alone ? 
Is that a kind thing to say ?” 

“ Mr. Charlie,” said Janet, desperately, I can hear 
by your voice that you are not in earnest ; and as for 
taking a fancy, I was only a child, and that could mean 
nothing. And the whole of it was just — ^just sport to 
you, and it is for a joke you’re doing it now.” 

Joke ! it’s no joke,” he said. I know what you 
think; you think I’m not gentleman enough for you. 
But I’ll have plenty of money, and your father, if he 
had lived, would not have turned me from his door. 
Hallo ! who’s there ?” he cried, starting up, as some one 
hit him sharply on the shoulder. Janet, looking up 
in fresh alarm, felt a mingled rush of terror and relief 
when she saw over Blackmore’s head the lowering coun- 
tenance of Tom. 

I say, Charlie, get out of that,” said Tom. “ I’m 
not going to stand this sort of thing, you know. I may 
be going to the dogs myself, but my sister sha’n’t. Be 
off, I tell you, and leave her alone.” 

Am I the dogs, Mr. Tom ? Ho such black dogs as 
you’re going to, my friend. Keep your good advice to 
yourself, and don’t intrude where you are not wanted. 
We can manage our affairs without you.” 

^^By Jove!” cried Tom, ^^if you speak another word 
to my sister. I’ll pitch you over the cliff !” 

Blackmore began to laugh, with an exasperating con- 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


191 


tempt — contempt which exasperated Janet, though Tom 
too had touched the same note of the intolerable. She 
sprang up hastily, putting out her arm between them. 
‘‘You are two men,” she said, “but Tom is not much 
more than a boy, and you are quarrelling about me, who 
want nothing in the world so much as to get away 
from both of you. Do you hear me ? I would not vex 
mother for all the men in the world. Oh, can’t you 
see that you are like two fools wrangling over me ?” 

“ Let him take himself off, then,” said Tom. 

“ And let him hold his tongue, the confounded young 
scamp !” cried the other, “ that dares to challenge me — 
when he knows I could lick him within an inch of his 
life.” 

Tom was half mad with disappointment and humilia- 
tion. He was very proud in his way, with the mingled 
pride of the peasant and the nouveau riche^ the million- 
aire and the (Scotch) clown. He had meant, after he 
had “ had his fun,” to have settled down when his time 
came, and to have married a lady like his mother. With- 
out imagination or sense or principle or restraint of 
honor, he had pursued his reckless career, too precipi- 
tate and eager in pursuit of pleasure to leave time to 
think, even if he had been able to think. The abomi- 
nable treachery of which he had intended to be guilty 
had not touched his conscience, not having appeared to 
his obtuse understanding as anything worse than many 
“ dodges” which other fellows adopted to get what they 
wanted. And it was with a rage and humiliation un- 


192 


LADY CAR: 


speakable that he found himself — he, the son of the man 
who had married Lady Caroline Lindores, married in 
his turn to a girl from a little Oxford shop, a little shop- 
girl, a common little flirt, less than nobody, not so good, 
by ever so many grades, as his mother’s maid. To find 
that he had married her when he meant only to deceive 
her, and made her mistress of the Towers, which was 
as Windsor Castle to Tom, and put her in the place of 
Lady Car, was gall and bitterness to him. His con- 
science had given him little trouble, but his wounded 
pride, his mortification, his humiliation were torture to 
him. He had come out, raging with these furious pangs, 
eager to find something, any thing, with which he could 
fight and assuage his burning wrath. To pitch Charlie 
Blackmore over the cliffs, even to be pitched over them 
himself and roll down the sharp rocks and plunge in 
the cold sea beneath, he felt as though it would be a re- 
lief from the gnawing and the rage within. 

“Come on, then!” he cried, furious; “I’ll take no 
licking from any man, if he were Goliath. Come on 1” 

“ Mr. Charlie,” cried Janet, putting out her hands, 
“ if it’s true, you may do one thing for me. One thing 
I ask you to do, as if you were the best gentleman in the 
world, and I will think you so if you will do it : leave 
me to him and him to me. And good-bye ; and neither 
say you like us nor hate us, but just go — oh, go ! Do you 
hear me ?” she said, stamping her foot. “ I ask you as 
a gentleman.” She had caught her brother by the arm 
and held him, while she waved the other away. 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


193 


“ That’s a strong argument,” said Blackmore. He 
was moved by what she said and also by common-sense, 
which told him his suit was folly. we’re fools, 

you’re ^n one. Miss Janet Torrance,” he said, with a laugh, 
“ which is more than I thought. What ! am I to turn 
my back upon a man that’s clenching his neives at me ? 
Well, maybe you’re right ! There’s none in the county 
will think Charlie Blackmore stands in fear of Tom 
Torrance. Yes, missie, you shall have your will. I’m 
going — ^good-bye to both him and you.” 

Do you think I’ll let the fellow go like that?” cried 
Tom, making a step after him, but perhaps his fury fell 
at the sight of the might and strength of the retiring 
champion — perhaps it was only the wretchedness in his 
mind, that fell from the burning to the freezing point. 
He sat down gloomily, after having watched him dis- 
appear, on the bench from which Charlie Blackmore 
had risen. 

‘^I don’t care what becomes of me, Jan,” he said. 
I’m done. Nothing that ever happens will be any good 
to me now. I’ve choked that fellow off, that’s one 
thing, and he’ll never dare speak to you again. But, as 
for me, I’m done, and I’ll never lift my head any more.” 

“ Oh, Tom !” Janet cried. She was too much excited 
by her own affairs to turn in a moment, with this new 
evolution, to his — but that panting cry bore any mean- 
ing according to the hearer’s apprehension, and he was 
too deep in his own thoughts to need more. 

“Yes,” said Tom, “it’s all over with me. Just come 
13 


194 


LADY CAB: 


of age and lots of money to spend, and all the world 
before me, as you might say — but Pll never have the 
heart to make any stand again. To think that all I’ve 
got, and might have done so much with, is to go to a 
woman that never had sixpence in her life and knows 
no more than a dog how to behave herself! As for 
hurting her, it wouldn’t have hurt her, not a bit — and 
if she’d had the chance she would have done just as bad 
by me. Law,” cried Tom, with bitter contempt, “ what’s 
the good of law when it can’t protect a fellow before 
he comes to his full senses ? To think I should have 
tied such a burden on my back, and done for myself 
forever, before I came of age. It’s horrible,” he cried, 
with the earnestness of conviction ; “ it’s damnable — 
that’s what it is.” 

‘‘ Oh, Tom, perhaps it will not be so bad,” said Janet, 
putting her hand within his to show her sympathy. She 
was very uncertain as to what it was that caused this 
despair, and she had been vaguely impressed with the 
fact that this time what Tom had done was something 
terrible ; but neither her own trouble nor any doubt 
about his conduct (which was so seldom blameless) could 
quench the sympathy with which she responded to his 
appeal. 

“ Oh, yes, it will be quite as bad and worse — and I’m 
a ruined man,” cried Tom. “ Done for ! although it 
was only last week,” he said, with a piteous quiver of 
the lip which a half-grown moustache nearly shaded, 
that I came of age.” 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


195 


Janet felt the pathos of this appeal go to the bottom 
of her heart. She did not know what to say to comfort 
him, and she could not keep her own eyes from stray- 
ing after Charlie, who, after all, had been very kind, 
who had gone away at her prayer like the most com- 
plete of gentlemen. She was very thankful to be re- 
leased, yet her eyes followed him with something like 
pride in his docility, and in the vigor and strength and 
magnanimity of her first lover. Though she was much 
afraid of him, Janet forgave him kindly as soon as he 
was gone. The tears came into her eyes for Tom’s dis- 
tress, while yet, with a thought for the other, she watched 
him with a corner of her eye over Tom’s bowed head. 
He turned round and took off his hat to her before he 
disappeared under the low arch, and Janet, in polite- 
ness and regret, made the faintest little bow and gave 
him a last glance. This made her pause before she 
answered Tom. 

“ It’s all Beau’s fault,” said Tom, as if he had been 
talking of stolen apples. ‘‘ She would never have been 
any wiser, nor mother either, if it hadn’t been for Beau 
with his confounded law. And I don’t believe it now,” 
he said ; I won’t believe it. Think, Jan — to be mar- 
ried and done for, and no way of getting out of it, be- 
fore you are twenty-one !” 

• “ But wasn’t it your own doing, Tom ?” 

Then Tom got up and gave vent to a great moral 
aphorism. There is nothing in this world your own 
doing,” he said; “you’re put up to it, or you’re led 


Mi 


196 


LABT CAB: 


into it, and one tells you one thing, and another another. 
But when you’ve been and done it after what’s been 
told you, and every one has had a hand in it to lead 
you on, then they all turn round upon you, and you 
have to bear it by yourself. And everybody says it’s 
your own doing. And neither the law nor your friends 
will help you. And you’re just ruined and done for — 
before you ever had begun at all.” 

“ Oh, Tom,” cried Janet, “ come home — and perhaps 
it will not turn out so bad after all.” 

It can’t turn out anything but bad — and I’ll just go 
and drown myself and be done with it all.” 

''Oh, Tom, Tom!” 

He got up from her with his hands deep in his pock- 
ets and his gloomy head bent. "Leave alone,” he said, 
pushing her away with his shoulder, as in the old nur- 
sery days. " Where’s dinner ? But I’ll dine at the club, 
you can tell Beau, if they’ll have me there.” 


THE SEQUEL OP A LIFE, 


197 


CHAPTER XVL 

Thebe could be no doubt that Beaufort behaved 
throughout this business in the most admirable way. 
He made the very best of it to Lady Car, who lay and 
listened to his voice as to the playing of a pleasant tune, 
sometimes closing her eyes to hear the better. She had 
got her death wound. Tom had never been the son 
she had dreamed. He was his father’s son, not hers, 
and to see him succumb to the grosser temptations had 
been misery and torture to her. But the story of that 
fraud, so fully intended, made with such clear purpose, 
was one of those overwhelming revelations which go to 
the very heart. If a woman is unhappy in her married 
life, if she is tricked and cheated by fate in every other 
way, there is still always the natural justice to fall back 
upon, that the children will be left to her — her children 
in whom to live a new life ; to see heaven unfolding 
again; to have some faint reflection of herself, some 
flower of her planting, some trace that she has been. 
And when she has to confess to herself that the child 
of her affections, the thing that has come from her, the 
climax of her own being, is in fact all unworthy, a creat- 
ure of the dunghill, not only base, but incapable of 
comprehending what is good and true, that final disen- 


198 


LADY CAB: 


chantment is too great for flesh and blood. Nature, 
merciful, sometimes blinds the woman’s eyes, makes 
her incapable of judging, fills her with fond folly that 
sees no imperfection in her own — and that folly is 
blessed. But there are some who are not blinded by 
love, but made more keen and quick of sight. She lay 
silent and listened, while Beaufort performed that mel- 
ody in her ears, feeling a poignant sweetness in it, since 
at least it was the most beautiful thing for him to do, 
yet with every word feeling more and more the anguish 
of the failure and the depth of the death wound which 
was in her heart. 

‘‘ There are boys who torture cats and dogs and tear 
flies asunder, and yet are not evil creatures,” Beaufort 
said ; “ they have not the power of realizing the pain 
they cause. They want imagination. They know noth- 
ing of the animals they hurt, except that they are there 
in their power to be done what they please with. My 
love, Tom is like that ; it is part of the dreadful cyni- 
cism that young men seem to originate somehow among 
themselves. They think they are the subjects of every 
kind of interested wile, and that such a thing as — this ” 
— Beaufort was not philosopher enough to name Tom’s 
act more distinctly — “is nothing more than a sort of 
balance on their side.” 

Lady Car opened her eyes, which were clear with 
fever and weakness, lucid like an evening sky, and 
looked at her husband with a piteous smile. 

“My dearest,” he said, hastily, “I am saying only 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


199 


how they represent such things to themselves. They 
don’t take time to think — they rush on to the wildest 
conclusions. The thing is done before they see or real- 
ize what it is. And then, as I tell you, they think them- 
selves the prey and those others the hunters, and take 
their revenge — when they can.” 

But it was hard to go on with that argument with 
her eyes upon him. When she closed them he could 
speak. When they opened again in the midst of his 
plea — those eyes so clear with fever, so liquid, as if every 
film had been swept from them, and only an all-seeing, 
unquenchable vision, yet tender as the heavens, left be- 
hind — he stopped and faltered in his tale ; and then he 
took refuge in that last resort of human feeling — the 
thing that had to be done, the expedients by which a 
wrong can be made to appear as if it were right, and 
trouble and misery smoothed away, so that the world 
should believe that all was well. 

The conclusion, which was not arrived at for some 
time, was that which old Lord Lindores took credit to 
himself for having suggested before, and which might 
have put a stop to all this,” he said, with a wave of his 
hand. It was Africa, and big game for two or three 
years, during which the “young woman” — the family 
spoke of her as if she had no name — should be put un- 
der careful training. It had been ascertained, still by 
Beaufort, who conducted himself to everybody’s admi- 
ration, that the “young woman” had no bad antece- 
dents, and that so much hope as there could be in such 


200 


LADY CAB: 


• a miserable business might be theirs. Tom was so 
thoroughly broken down by the discovery which hum- 
bled his clownish pride to the dust, and made him feel 
almost as poor a creature as he was, that he gave in with 
little resistance to the dictates of the family council. 
No unhappy university man, however, was beguiled into 
accompanying this unlikely pupil. He was given into 
the hands of a mighty sportsman, who treated him like 
a powder-boy, and brought Tom, the lord of the Tow- 
ers, the wealthiest commoner in the North, the expe- 
rienced man of Oxford, into complete and abject sub- 
jection — which was the best thing that could have 
happened to him. 

The “ young woman ” was less easily subdued. She 
wrote to her relations that it had been all a mistake, 
but that family reasons had made it impossible for her 
husband *and herself to disclose the true state of affairs 
before. That, instead of being Mrs. Francis Lindores, 
she was Mrs. Thomas Francis Lindores Torrance, of 
the Towers, her dear husband being the son of Thomas 
Torrance, Esq., of the Towers, and of Lady Caroline 
Lindores, the daughter of the Earl of Lindores, from 
whom dear Tom took his second name, as they might 
see in any Peerage ; that her mother-in-law and all her 
new family were very nice to her, and that she was going 
off upon a visit with Lady Edith Erskine, who was her 
aunt, and dear grandmamma the countess. And she 
ordered for herself at once new cards with Mrs. T. F. 
Lindores Torrance ” upon them, which she thought were 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


201 


far more distinguished-looking than the original name. 
But when Mrs. Tom became aware that dear grandmam- 
ma and her dear aunt meant to conduct her to an edu- 
cational establishment, where she was to pass at least 
the two next years of her life, the young woman rebelled 
at once. She had never heard, she declared, of a mar- 
ried woman going to school ; that her place was wdth 
her husband ; that she had passed all the standards and 
learned to play the piano, and had taken lessons in 
French ; that no woman, unless she were going to be a 
governess, wanted more; and, finally, that she flatly 
refused to go. It was more diflBcult, much more diffi- 
cult than with Tom, to convince his wife; for she was 
still more ignorant than Tom, and thought his giving 
in ridiculous, and did not see why, with him or without 
him, she should not go and take up her abode at the 
Towers and look after things,” which she felt must be 
in great want of some one to look after them. She was 
made to yield at last, but not without difficulty, declar- 
ing to the last moment that she could not be refused 
alimony, and that she would take her alimony and go 
and live independent at home till her husband came to 
claim her, rather than go to school at her age. But 
Beaufort managed this too, to the admiration of every- 
body. He brought to bear upon the young woman 
pressure from her ’ome, where her mother, under his 
skilful manipulation, was brought to see the necessity 
of her rebellious daughter’s going to school and declining 
to receive her. This was at the cost of another allowance 


203 


LADT GAR: 


from Tom’s estate, for it was not fit that Tom’s mother- 
in-law should continue to earn her bread poorly, without 
her daughter’s assistance, in a poor little confectioner’s 
shop. Beaufort managed all this without even betray- 
ing the name of this poor old woman or where she lived 
to the researches of the Lindores, for Lady Car was very 
tender of her boy’s name even now. 

And she was taken home — to Easton, which she loved — 
and said she was much better, and was able to be out 
on her husband’s arm, and sit on the lawn and watch the 
sun setting and the stars coming out over the trees. 
But she had got her death wound. She lay on the sofa 
for months, for one lingering winter after another, 
smiling upon all that was done for her, very anxious 
that Janet should go everywhere and enjoy everything, 
and that Beaufort should be pleased and happy. She 
asked nothing for herself, but gave them her whole heart 
of love and interest to everything that was done by 
them. She had her sofa placed where she could see 
them when they went out, and smiled when Beaufort 
said, always with a slight hesitation, for he thought it 
was not right to leave her, that he was going to ride 
over to the club or to spend a day in town. “ Do ; 
and bring us back all the news,” she said. And when 
Janet went away, with compunctions, to go to balls with 
her grandmother. Lady Oar was the one who explained 
away all objections. “ Quite pleased to have you go 
— to have Beau to myself for a little,” Lady Car said 
sometimes, a little vexing her child ; but, when Janet 


THE SEQUEL (9F A LIFE. 


203 


was gone, urging Beaufort to the pleasure he longed for 
but did not like to take. “It is just what I wanted, 
that you should go to town ; and you can bring me 
back news of my little Den.” Sometimes they were 
even a little piqued that she wanted them so little — poor 
Lady Car ! 

And thus, quite gently, she faded away, loved — as 
other people love, not as she loved: cherished and 
revered, but not as she would have revered and cherished ; 
with a husband who read the papers and went to his 
club and got very gracefully through life, in which he 
was of no importance to any one, and her only son ban- 
ished to Africa shooting big game. Janet was a good 
child, very good ; but her mother never knew how near 
the girl was to her in the shadowy land where people 
may wander side by side, but without the intervention 
of words or some self -betrayal never find each other out. 
Perhaps had Janet found the courage to fiing herself 
down at her mother’s side and say all that was in her 
heart, the grasp of that warm hand might still have 
brought Lady Car back to life. But Janet had not the 
courage, and everything went on in its daily calm, and 
the woman whose every hope had faded into blank dis- 
appointment, and all her efforts ended in failure, faded 
away. During the first summer Lady Car still went 
out to dine and walked a little about the garden with 
her husband’s arm ; the next she was carried out to her 
sofa on the lawn. All went so very gradually, so very 
softly, that no one noted. She was very delicate. 


204 


LAliY CAR: 


When that gets to be fully recognized, there seems no 
reason why it should not go on forever ; not so happy a 
state as perfect health, to be sure, but with no reason 
in it why there should be any further change. 

One evening she was out of doors longer than usual 
— a soft, lingering summer night — so warm that even an 
invalid could get no harm out of doors. She loved so 
to see the daylight gradually fade away, and the stars 
come out above, and over all the wide champaign below 
a twinkle of little human lights here and there. She 
took almost a childish pleasure in those lights, thinking 
as much of the villages and scattered houses — identify- 
ing their humanity low down among the billows of the 
wood or the sweep of the upland slopes — as of the 
stars above. The greater and the lesser lights,” she 
said, and then murmured low to herself, “ Compensa- 
tions,” under her breath. 

‘‘ What do you mean by compensations, Carry?” 

“I do not much believe in them,” she said. Noth- 
ing can compensate for what one loses. It is better not. 
Looking to the east, Edward, see, there are no lights, 
but only that silvery, misty grayness where any glory 
might lie hidden only we see it not. Now I have come 
so far as this, I think I like that best.” 

‘‘ So far as what, Carry ?” Something cold and chill 
seemed to come over them like a cloud. It is grow- 
ing chilly, you ought to come in-doors, my love.” 

Yes, presently. I have always been fond of the 
lights — like a baby; but look the other way. You 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE, 


205 


would say at first there was nothing to be seen at all ; 
but there are all the shades of grayness, from one tint 
to another, and everything lying still, putting out no 
self-assertion, content to be in God’s hand. And so am 
I, Edward.” 

Yes, my love.” 

“ Quite content. I have had everything, and — and 
nothing. The heart of it has always been stolen from 
me, all the lights put out ; but the dark is sweet too ; 
it is only dim, dim, not discernible — don’t call it dark.” 

“ Carry ! whatever you please, dear.” 

‘‘Edward, do you know what this means — ‘the peace 
that passeth understanding V ” 

“ Carry, my darling, you break my heart. No ; how 
should I know ?” 

“ I think I do,” she said, softly. “ It lies upon your 
heart like the dew, yet nothing to bring it, no cause, a 
thing that is without reason, what you would call irra- 
tional altogether — that passeth understanding. Edward, 
if ever you think afterwards, remember that I told you. 
I think that I have got it — I wanted other things, but 
they were not given me. I begin to think that this — is 
the best.” 

“ My dearest, let me carry you in ; it is getting quite 
dark and chilly.” 

“You are tired of my little sermon, Edward,” she 
said, with the faint, tender smile which he divined rather 
than saw. 

“I — tired? of anything you may say or do! But 


306 


LADY CAR: 


you must not be longer out in the night air. Come, 
Carry, let me lift you.” 

Whether her mind had begun to wander, or if it were 
a prevision, or what moved her, no one could ever tell. 
She resisted a little, putting her hands on his arm. 

You must not forget,” she said, ‘‘ to give my love to 
Tom.” 

Beaufort called loudly to her maid, who was waiting. 
“ It is too late — too late for her to be out ! Come and 
take the cushions,” he said, in the sudden panic that had 
moved him. 

“ And my little Den,” she said, “ my little Den — they 
will, perhaps, as they get older — Edward, I am afraid I 
feel a little faint.” 

He took her in his arms, his heart sinking with a sud- 
den panic and blind terror, as if the blackness of dark- 
ness were sweeping over him. But they succeeded in 
getting her to her room and her bed, where she said 
goodrnight and kissed him, and dropped sweetly asleep, 
as they thought — but never woke again. They found 
her in the morning, lying in the same attitude, with the 
same smile. 

Thus Lady Car ended the tragedy which had been 
going on unseen, unknown to any one — the profound, 
unrivalled tragedy of her life. But so sweetly that no 
one ever knew the tragedy it had been. Her husband 
understood more or less the failure of her heart over her 
children — her son — but he never even imagined that it 
was he himself that had given the first and perhaps the 


-i *944 


THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE. 


207 


deepest blow, though not the coup de grdce^ which had 
been left for Tom. 

Poor little Janet was summoned home from the merry 
house to which she had gone, where there were many 
entertainments going on. She was roused out of the 
fatigue of pleasure, out of her morning sleep after the 
ball, to be told that her mother was dead. They thought 
the girl’s heart would have burst. The cry of “ Mozer, 
Mozer !” her old child’s cry, sounded to those who heard 
it like something that no consolation could touch. But, 
to be sure, her teal’s were dried, like all other tears, 
after a while. 


THE END. 



SOME POPULAR AMERICAN NOVELS. 


miWEEN THE LINES. A Story of the War. By Captain CHARLES King, U.S.A. 
j Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $i 25. 

k WAR-TIME WOOING. By Capt. CHARLES King, U.S.A. Illustrated. Post 8vo, 
j Cloth, $i 00. 

k BROTHER TO DRAGONS, AND OTHER OLD-TIME TALES. By Amelie Rives. 
r Post, 8vo, Cloth, $i 00. 

flBGINIA OF VIRGINIA. By Amalie Rives. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $i 00. 
APRIL HOPES. By W. D. Howells. i2mo. Cloth, $i 50. 
klwrrE KILBURN. By W. D. Howells. i2mo. Cloth, $i 50. 

k STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER. Illustrated. 

i2mo, Cloth, $i 25. 

PILGRIMAGE. By Charles Dudley Warner. Illustrated by Charles 
S. Reinhart. Post 8vo, Half Leather, $2 00. 

N-HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By Lew. Wallace. i6mo. Cloth, $i 50. 

6hiTA. a Memory of Last Island. By Lafcadio Hearn. Post 8vo, Cloth. {Just 
r Ready.) 

^HE CHILDREN OF OLD PARK’S TAVERN. A Story of the South Shore. By 
1 Frances A. Humphrey. i6mo. Cloth, $i 00. 

OFON A CAST. By CHARLOTTE Dunning. i6mo. Cloth, |i 00. 

ENTAILED HAT ; or, PATTY CANNON’S TIMES. By GeorGE ALFRED 
Townsend (“ Gath ”). i6mo. Cloth, $i 50. 

^E BREAD-WINNERS. A Social Study. i6fno. Cloth, $i 00. 

OLD MARK LANGSTON. A Tale of Duke’s Creek. By Richard Malcolm Johns- 
I TON. i6mo. Cloth, $i 00. 

UL ABSALOM BILLINGSLEA, AND OTHER GEORGIA FOLK. By RICHARD 
I Malcolm Johnston. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, $i 25. / 

i TRANSPLANTED ROSE. A Story of New York Society. i6mo. Cloth, 00. 
WASHINGTON SQUARE. By Henry JAMES, Jr. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, 25. 
EN TROY. By Mrs. BURTON Harrison. i6mo. Cloth, $i 00. 

AR HARBOR DAYS. By Mrs. BURTON Harrison. Illustrated. i6mo, Cloth, $i 25. 
NY, THE MAID. By BLANCHE WiLLis HOWARD. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, $i 00. 
PTAIN MACDONALD’S DAUGHTER. By ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. i6mo. Cloth, 
$i 00. 

UDENCE. By LuCY C. Lillie. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, 90 cents. 

A. VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. By WoLCOTT Balestier. Illustrated by Alfred Bren- 
NAN. i2mo. Cloth, $i 00. 

A HUMBLE ROMANCE. By Mary E. WiLKiNS. i6mo. Cloth, $i 25. 

A MAGNIFICENT PLEBEIAN. By JULIA MagrUDER. i6mo, Cloth, $i 00. 

BV CONSTANCE FEN I MORE WOOL SON: 

EAST ANGELS. i6mo. Cloth, 25. 

ANNE. Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart. i6mo. Cloth, $i 25. 

FOR THE MAJOR. A Novelette. Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, { 

CASTLE NOWHERE. Lake-Country Sketches.' i6mo. Cloth, 

RODMAN THE KEEPER. Southern Sketches. i6mo, Cloth, 

JUPITER LIGHTS. {In Press.) 


[ 00. 
M 00. 
;i 00. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send any of the above ivorks by mail ^ postage prepaid, to a7ty paid 
of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, oft receipt of the price. 


I 



The Best Family Reading. 


N O publishing house has yet succeeded in ministering, as the Harpers do, through their peri 
icals, to old and young, men and women seekers for current news graphically illustrat 
scholars, travellers, and artists, and children of all ages. — Observer, N. Y. 

Its history is a large part of the literc 
history of the nineteenth ce7itMry in A?)teri 
— N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 

The only illustrated paper of the day th 
in its esse/ztial characteristics, is recogniz 
as a national paper . — Brooklyn Eagle. 

To take it is a znatter of ecozioniy, . 
one can ^'afford t& be without //.-—Chica 
Evening Journal. 

Harper’s Young People cozitains 
marvellous amomit of healthful and intere 
ing reading for youzig people of all ages a^ 
both sexes . — Boston Journal. 


Booksellers and Postmasters usually receive Subscriptions. Stibscriptions sent direct to the Puhli 
ers should be accompanied by Post-office Money Order or Draft, When no time is specified, Stibscf 
tions will begin with the current zttmiber. 


r - 

t 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS. New York 



Harper’s Magazine. 

Postage Free. $4.00 a Year. 

Harper’s Weekly. 

Postage Free. $4.00 a Year. 

Harper’s Bazar. 

Postage Free. $4.00 a Year. 

Harper’s Young People. 

Postage Free. $2.00 -a Year. 



V ■ 








'* -If.', 

■:t‘X 


1 




t i' 




•.St'/’ 


^ "^ ■ * ‘ '''■^' ■•■ '. V* ‘ ^'y*'k'h//' *'*> 

t ; • ■ .-.h • .-I ' . 




' S< ' 

f 


■Af’ 



■"■'JS 4 "* ” " 


•Vvi . .- T^'SSs;® 


r-h -; -'• *^1 


1 ^. V . . . 

'As . -S i‘T 



y>.^; 




% :; 't ■■/ ‘/^-^riV •' ' ‘ S'; S' 

'T' :.' ‘ j/‘ ;■ 

;■■ - I' Ss' ' 


71 ^ 


J^. T-^‘ 




.7 

' » 



.T . -> 

■ W.i 


■i^':r.. ■ 




'‘V 





sy p • ■ . *' 

, r* w -V 


^ ■* . ' S'-f- '■'“A . * • ’i • 

■;v ' ■" ■ V •' -I 


/.J.v 


• 'V 

■4 ^ ' 


*.- ' 'JT' '■' - T' ■! 

■’ ' ■■■■;''''' 

■■ 


;.: "iTv^ ■' ret 

' V.V‘';S 


■ ■ ' #;V,V ‘y 


'* .:v 0'“ 


t I 


^ t x V , 



(M ''’• »■ , < Vi'.v 




S' -m 

'■'•’i ill' '^la'j 

vt^' 


- „v ' ■>-■! ^ :'.^ .V.P .' :Jm^f ■' 

* ' * ** ■ ; ' ' /. v-^A- '/ f *•; t r**“U ‘I'S^" 

■7/ S 

' \ 11 ■' . .?■ ' 


,’.> . ^' e.. , . 




5. 


h '/ 


.f, J. 

< } ff 


I 


,:‘t 







'y- w: vs 

^ 't* •, '. u -1 ' 

■ ' iS' ’ 


‘ ' .St 

> t’ 


y*is 

•' : ■>' y - VTviV.] 


v^; if :. ss' 

■ ;"„il ■/■"f'm 


u 




< ; ) 




V i 




,<S*I 

f 




' ■' 
• • . '■» 


; i.;'.v 


A 'i, ;S.^. ;' 





■ , '.4 1 

/-,•■'■>' '.'Is 


'/v'.l 




■'■V' '(v 'v . 
• .•> ;\ . -.‘S ' 




-' '• -. ■'' <' 'v ■•»'•.• 'y ' '•' r^'-- *vV ^ 

■ '.■v ' 

...•''vs 

. '.f iy i, - 

;4.’'''’;’..'''.;,v’vv;’V. V.:... ...' 


■■ / 'Qs^jl y Hyrr^ 
'■ ' '■• ■■'I'/ ¥::' >?'■ ' s 


'.•.•• i/ e <p 


I. ' 


S /' ■- 

. >'^r 


•'v;v 


il* .V il 

I ■ . 


i ' 


,! ■ 


. ,'V. . I.' , . 

■ -V- ■ ';• Zyy^.:y'*r.xyf' 


V ’ r *' ,'^r . s; 4 -f’' 5 ,'* 


'k .« 


■ ■■ 

).S«’ 






/ ’I •: 'V V’.v. 

.' ‘/.St \ •W.a'...S; 








